


so rhett says to scarlett,

by Book_Wyrm



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brief Mention of Animal Cruelty / Animal Death, Cannibalism, Canon Relationships Not Suitable for Full Tagging, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dark, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Ghosts, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Non-canon world building, Original characters but they’re not a big part of it, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sadism, Season 2 / Season 3, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Smoking / Tobacco Use, discussion of suicide, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2019-09-30 09:16:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 70,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17221166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Book_Wyrm/pseuds/Book_Wyrm
Summary: Shane leaves after killing Otis. Over a year later, his return has unexpected consequences for the group—and for Rick.His first impression of Shane is the heavy fall of those stupid combat boots on the bare floorboards. A sense of motion from the shadowed corner, and he steps into view. He looks, impossibly, just as he did the night he left—even wearing the same clothes. It’s as though he only stepped forward in time, departing that night from Hershel’s farm and arriving here, having forwent all the living in between.





	1. September / March / April / June

**Author's Note:**

> Entirely TV show-based because I haven’t read the comics.
> 
> Only characters who die in canon die here. (Not that this is saying much anymore.) Slight SPOILER for this fic: Carol's fine, and I'm sorry about Merle, who both did and didn't deserve better than this.
> 
> Sirs-Not-Appearing-In-This-Fic: Any character introduced after season two, with the exception of the Governor and a few side characters from Woodbury.
> 
> That scene in season nine ruined my life and reminded me of how much I loved this actual dumpster fire of a ship back in the day. After a quick rewatch of seasons one and two, this was supposed to be the short and sweet 8k wish-fulfillment fic I always wanted to write. My hand slipped and it turned into a NaNoWriMo project. Counting this prologue, there are a total of eight chapters, and I’m currently estimating the final word count at around 180k. TO THOSE HERE STRICTLY FOR THE PROMISED EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT: it starts in chapter five, which I’m hoping to have up soon-ish. Sorry for the wait!
> 
> One last note at the risk of repeating myself from the tags: this fic contains a number of issues that may be off-putting to some readers. Most prominently, it deals with the kind of unhealthy relationship that I would hope none of you ever experience in real life. If you have any hesitation about reading this sort of material, I would recommend you play it safe and give this fic a miss.
> 
> All my thanks to [almadeamla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/almadeamla) for beta reading, plot help, and for being the kind of person I feel lucky to know.

 

**_SEPTEMBER_ **

~~_“Stay.”_ ~~

 

**:::**

 

It takes a few days to piece the whole story together. Everyone holds a different part of the narrative, and making sense of it all - of who saw what and when - is like assembling a puzzle blindfolded in the dark. The story they’re left with has the strung-together quality of a work of investigative reporting, as if someone ought to preface it with, _Sources report…_ But no matter how clear a picture they have of the who, what, where, when, and how, the _why_ remains unknown.

What they do know is this: Sometime after midnight the lights of Otis’s pick-up truck washed over the front porch of Hershel’s house. Shane stepped out alone with two bags of much-needed medical supplies. Shook his head when asked about Otis. Everyone was rushing around; Hershel rolling up his sleeves, Maggie grabbing the bag of supplies and hurrying into the house. No one could spare a more than a moment to think about Otis, or—

Shane, who stayed over by the truck for a while, during the surgery. Or at least T-Dog and Glenn are almost positive he did.

Hershel emerged from the house over an hour later, wiping his hands with a washcloth no longer white, saying Carl would pull through. Shane was there then, they all think. Lori says she’s sure he was in the house for a second afterwards—sure of it, that’s all she says—but when Maggie went to look for him a few minutes later, to bring him a change of clothes and usher him into the upstairs shower, he was nowhere to be found. She didn’t think much of it—too exhausted to worry about someone she’d barely met—and concluded he probably just needed some time alone.

Dale was the last person to see Shane around, and his part of the story is both the most and the least telling all at once. He reports that he was keeping watch from the top of the RV, waiting for Daryl and Andrea to get back from combing the woods for Sophia. When he saw motion in the woods, no flashlights, he tucked his rifle up against his shoulder, ready to shoot. He was sure it was a walker and was waiting for a clear shot, and says it was lucky he realized in time that it was Shane, because Shane didn’t say anything, didn’t call out in greeting or to announce his presence.

Dale’s instincts are sharp; when he reports he noticed right away something was off, no one doubts him.

He called down a quiet admonishment— _Would you please announce yourself next time? I just about took your head off!_ —but says still about a minute passed before Shane said anything to him at all. Just stalked around the RV, limping badly, checked inside, closed the door, went and looked up and down the highway. At last he asked where Daryl and Andrea were and Dale told him—Dale, by this point, was verging on panic, jumping the worst possible conclusions. Carl dead. T-Dog dead. Everyone dead, and somehow only Shane had gotten away, was too shaken up to talk about it.

But right around then Shane’s whole demeanor changed, brightened in an instant—his face swept abruptly free of any trouble. He said Carl was fine, T-Dog was fine, everyone was fine, everyone’s going to be just fine. Did he say it that way? Did that mean something? He must have already decided what he was going to do, or he wouldn’t have been at the highway at all.

And while Dale was still reeling from relief, Shane told him that he’d had a close call while getting supplies and was still too on-edge to sleep, and that he wouldn’t mind keeping watch for a few hours, give him something to do. Besides, he’d said in that cheerful, reasonable, just-like-himself-way, Dale had to be getting tired by now, didn’t he? This was true—the chaos of the day had been exhausting, and after a bit of passing resistance, Dale let his fatigue overcome his better judgement and went to lie down in the RV for a while.

He was just dozing off when he heard a car engine start. By the time he jolted out of bed and jumped up, threw himself out of the RV and staggered barefoot out onto the cooling tarmac, it was too late to do anything—anything but stare after the streaks of red tail lights sliding away into the dark.

 

**:::**

 

**_MARCH_ **

They’re driving away from the farm and Carl knows it’s his fault.

He’s in the back seat of the truck, his mom and dad in the front, and they’re driving fast. Headlights up ahead. The moon flashes through the trees. The chaos they left behind seems to have followed them into the car like another passenger. Carl’s ears ache like there’s still someone screaming right next to him, someone firing off a gun inches from his head. Is this what people feel like when they’re having a heart attack? He saw a documentary on heart attack survivors once, back when there was still TV. A large man clutching his chest, eyes bulging, gasping for air as he hit his knees. That’s how Carl feels now—choked, agonized, squeezed tight.

It’s his fault because the afternoon before he’d climbed up into the loft of the barn. Just to have a look. He’d been told again and again to stay away from the barn. He knew what was in there; knew even as he was doing it that it was stupid.

But it was one thing to know what was in the barn and another thing to see it.

The smell hit him first. It seemed to go not through his nose, but straight to his mouth, as though a piece of rotted flesh had been set upon his tongue, making him nearly gag. Then he heard it, a soft noise: shuffling feet on dirt and straw. A series of unenthused noises—heavy, wet breathing, the rhythmic clack of teeth chewing on air.

Carl felt a chill go through him, skin turning rough and strange with gooseflesh. It was a little like the moment before the plunge from the top of a very high rollercoaster—a kind of sweet terror so intense it bordered on excitement. He took a few more steps forward over the creaking floorboards. Dust fell through the slats between them. His pulse hammered. He hadn’t been so close to a walker since the ones on the highway.

The noises under his feet grew louder as he crept the final few inches towards the edge of the loft, and stood looking down.

He thought at first that the floor was moving. In the dark they looked like one thing, a single mass with many hands and mouths. Large and small, all filthy, ragged, grey skin. Carl’s breath caught—he started back a step in surprise, and one of the floorboards snapped under his foot.

It was only in one place, only beneath one foot—he fell with a shout, caught himself in an instant and pulled himself up, heart lunging into his throat. A moment’s blind panic, scrambling away from the broken floorboard, but even as he did he knew he was alright, that he’d gotten lucky, he’d made it. But the walkers beneath heard his shout, the snapping board. The noise they made was horrible—gurgling, snarling, choked up sounds. Rot and hunger given voice.

Carl ran, made it to the ladder, climbed quickly down, out into the fresh air, better than any air he’d ever smelled. But even outside the barn he could hear them, getting louder. Boney, ragged fingers reached out between the boards that formed the barn walls. Reaching for him.

He didn’t look back. He turned and bolted back to the house, didn’t stop running until he collided with Andrea, on her way onto the porch with two glasses of sweet tea.

“Whoa!” she said, starting back. Some of the tea splashed over the edge of the glasses, onto her hands. She looked annoyed for a split second before her gaze found his face. “Hey—are you alright?”

Shaken, he nodded, said that he was—his voice came out thin and strained, and he could tell she didn’t believe him. He rushed past her, keeping his head down, ignored the questions she flung at his back. But he was grateful it was Andrea, who didn’t seem to know how to talk to him, always got a little awkward around him. If it was anyone else, they might have followed, and the questions might have gone on. Upstairs his mom was waking from a nap, and he went to her, sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand and waited for his heart to stop pounding and tried to think no more of the barn.

If he hadn’t gone there—or if he’d told his mom then that he had—maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad. But it was. It is. This is real, and it’s his fault. The truck hits a rough patch of road, bumps and swerves, flinging gravel under the tires. In the front seat Carl hears his dad swear and his mom give a little shout of surprise—something hits the side of the truck, snarling, but they’re moving too fast and the impact throws it away back into the dark, sound choked off.

He saw them get Patricia. He knows he heard Dale scream. Andrea, too, and then he was in the car, and they were tearing away into the night. Away from the farm. Away from the barn with its broken upon doors hanging there like some toothless, gaping mouth, away from the dozens of walkers pouring out of it.

Panic stabs at his chest, sharp and electric. It’s hard work to force air into his lungs. He realizes his mom’s saying something to him but her voice sounds like it’s a long ways off. He doesn’t hear a word of it.

“It’s my fault,” and saying it aloud winds him like catching a blow to the stomach. He bends his head again and feels his mom’s hand on his shoulder, hears her talking, her voice low and urgent. Telling him, _No—it’s not your fault, Carl. Don’t talk like that. It’s not your fault._

But he knows it is. Just like the rest of it.

 

**:::**

 

**_APRIL_ **

Rick is sitting on a porch step, and the step is painted white and the paint is peeling. Old timber beneath. He picks at it absently and a splinter lodges in his thumb.

Maggie and Glenn and T-Dog and Daryl stand a distance away, talking, their voices low and solemn. They shoot glances back at Rick from time to time. He’s close enough to hear what they say, aware enough to know it’s about him. He hears most of all a low roar, deep in his ears, like being far underwater. He hears an echo, a ghost of a noise—a scream, and the moment it ends, a sharp, awful, sobbing drop. He hears the suddenness of it. The blank space at the end of that scream plays on a kind of loop in his head, and it’s difficult to hear around it.

The town they had to stop in is like a dozen others in this part of the state—a few white clapboard houses line a stretch of road along the highway, surrounded on either side by red dirt and bone thin trees. Up the road a ways a solitary walker makes its lumbering way out of the brush and heads their way. Maggie glances back at it, draws the axe from her belt. She meets it in the middle of the street and brings the axe down overhand into its skull with a crunch and it falls like a puppet with cut strings. She shakes off the axe, returns it to her belt, joins the rest of the group again and they go on talking in that quiet, urgent way, and it seems absurd. They spend so much time wrapped up in strategies for survival like it will do anyone any good. Maggie and Glenn stand close to each other like it will help, like the force of their love for each other will save them, and a day ago, an hour ago, Rick might have considered this a valid strategy. He knows now that it’s useless.

The screen door opens with a creak and clatters shut again at his back. The conversation cuts off as though someone fired off a gunshot and Hershel walks down the steps, wiping blood from his hands with a scavenged dish rag. He takes a few paces out into the front lawn and stops looks back at Rick.

“It’s a girl.”

 

**:::**

 

He can’t bring himself to hold the baby. Her screaming gets into his head and stays there. _We need to find some baby formula for her,_ Maggie says. Or maybe it’s Carl, or Daryl, or Hershel. Their faces a sort of carousel jumble through a black haze, and they all want to say something to him or ask something of him. Rick knows he responds, but he isn’t sure what he says. He can’t think around the baby’s screaming.

And—days, or maybe weeks later, they have to set out. Can’t stay any longer. Walkers coming by too frequent and too many. Rick has a crystal-clear moment as he gets into the truck and Carl, holding Judith, settles into what used to be Lori’s seat beside him.

They head out.

 

**:::**

 

**_JUNE_ **

_At least the winter is over._ He latches onto this phrase and thinks it again and again. The days getting hotter. Everything sweaty and humid and damp. At night they leave the car windows cracked, enough to let air in but not the hands of any passing walkers, not a breeze, and Rick doesn’t sleep. There’s a summer thunderstorm brewing, and he watches the light across the sky drawing closer, purpling the clouds. Smells the ozone. The thunder wakes up Judith and she screams in spite of Carl’s attempts to calm her back to sleep.

In winter, they might not be able to make it. How would they ever keep warm? There’s no food to find anymore, tracing and retracing the same routes again and again. Rick tries to remember to the last time they ate a full meal and he can’t. It must have been months ago. Must have been with Lori. Must have been in winter.

A walker comes by and slams its hands against the window. A flash of lightning illuminates its snarling, hungry face. It’s only hungry, Rick thinks, looking into its eyes. The whole world is hungry. They have a thing or two in common.

“Dad?” Carl says next to him. “Dad?”


	2. October

**_OCTOBER_ **

It’s a bad place to break down.

A barricade stretches across the highway. Cars jammed tight together, barbed wire strung between them, going across east and west lanes alike, stretching into the woods on either side. Smashed between the cars are dozens of walkers. Trapped, pinned; their arms left free to reach out and grab. And it’s here, just as they were about to turn around, that the van they’d been using for months produced a sudden _bang!_ as loud as a shotgun blast, and the engine coughed and died.

“Well,” Glenn says, when they pop the hood and stand staring and the baffling array of metal within, “the radiator hose looks good.”

“When was the last time we checked the oil?” Rick asks.

“I don’t remember—month ago? Two?”

“We should check it more often than that.”

“You think that could be the problem?”

“Maybe,” Rick says. He doesn’t know where to start with any of this. His knowledge of cars is limited: he knows how to hotwire one in a pinch, how to change a tire and check the oil and where the best places are if you’re a cokehead trying to hide a bag of blow—beyond that, there was never much necessity to learning these things.

Daryl drifts over towards them.

“You pop the hood as a formality, or you fixin’ to do something?”

“It’s got to be _something_ with the spark plugs,” Glenn says, chewing the inside of his cheek. “Backfire like that is usually spark plugs. It’s probably that. Isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Rick says again, because this sounds plausible, and, more importantly, easy to fix.

The problem is they’ve fallen into the trap of putting all their eggs in one basket, and without the van, they have six people in lack of a vehicle. Two can fit in the cab of the truck with Rick, Carl, and Judith, but four will have to pile into the open bed at the back of it, which is dangerous best. More than a few nights they’ve had to hunker down in their cars with the windows up and the doors closed until a herd of walkers passed. It’s not much protection, but what it does supply is essential. Worse—they’ve been using the truck to carry most of their supplies, and with the supplies from the van and an extra six people piled in, it’s going to be impossible to fit everything. Already packed as light as they can afford, Rick knows they don’t have a lot of extra weight to shed.

They could try to get one of the cars out the barricade and working again. It might take a few attempts, and there’s nothing accessible that could fit six people and supplies, so they’d need at least two. An option, but a poor one, because it means staying here, close to a territory staked out by some other group they know nothing about.

The other option is to try and fix up the van. Fast.

Glenn, on the same train of thought, says, “We passed an auto shop a few miles back. Bet it’s not picked clean yet.”

“Couldn’t we get what we need from one of these cars?”

“I can look, sure. But I’m not sure if that’s the kind of thing that goes bad in a car if it sits too long. I’d rather not—” He glances over at Maggie, standing a distance away and eying the barricade, and lowers his voice, “rather not stay here too long finding out. Why don’t you and Daryl run back to that auto place, and I’ll see what we can find here. That way we don’t waste time exploring our options if one doesn’t work. If I get it up and running before you’re back, we’ll meet you back in town.”

“Daryl stays and keeps watch here,” Rick says. “You look around and see what you can find. Everyone keeps close. We’ll—” He turns. As happens sometimes, he realizes he was starting to say something to someone who isn’t there, who hasn’t been in a while. These ghostly impressions have grown less and less frequent, but no remain less jarring when they do come. He rallies himself, brushes the moment away as briskly as he would a spider on the back of his hand.

“I’ll take Carl with me into town,” he decides. “Keep things simple.”

“You think?”

“Town was quiet when we passed through. Besides—he’s getting to be a pretty good shot.”

 

**:::**

 

Judith started crying when the car backfired, but she’s calmed down by the time they get into town, almost gotten back to sleep. Rick’s glad of that; the sound of her screaming sets off a ringing in his ears, a stopped-up underwater sensation he’s spent the last six months fighting away from, a circling shark which might at any moment drag him under again.

The town sits silently under a clear blue autumn sky, buildings graffitied, windows broken out, and glass crunching underfoot in streets. A _Welcome To_ sign with the name faded off hangs from its post by a single nail. They may have passed through this town months or weeks ago: it’s indistinguishable from half a dozen others they’ve seen. Everything is the same on the road.

Carl carries Judith, as usual. He tucks her against his shoulder, making shushing sounds as they explore the auto shop. Rick whispers to him to stay close, but the building is quiet, full of nothing but shadows. It has a place by the counter where customers could wait back when this place had customers, lined with leather spinny stools emblazoned with the company names. Smells of oil, cheap leather, plastic. Carl perches on one of the spinny chairs, making little forty-five degree rotations and holding Judith on his knee, speaking quietly to her while Rick investigates the back of the shop.

Low windows, unbroken, line the storeroom. A few are open, and the air through them is crisp and cool. Rick moves carefully, inspecting rows of labelled inventory, parts and pieces labelled with numbers, dashes, letters.

It only takes a minute to find the bin full of spark plugs. He gathers them up; any other time he would grab a few more supplies while he’s here, but the thought of the rest of the group back on the highway stops him, makes him move fast.

When he returns to the front room there’s motion outside the big glass windows—lots of motion. Walkers. Shambling by, focused blankly ahead, moving like sleepwalking toddlers.

Carl has already dropped out of the chair and crouches behind the counter, his face pale, trying hard to keep Judith quiet. Rick, too, ducks down, his heart in his throat—he didn’t bother securing the door at their backs, and the windows would be easy enough for anything to break and step through. He sees the truck, a sea of rotting bodies between them and it. A few walkers bump into it, snarl as if annoyed, and redirect their course.

Herds like this have been a common sight in the last few months. The thing to do is wait them out. They pass, eventually. These ones seem to be moving west, back towards the highway. They move according to some perverted Newton’s law—walker in motion will stay in motion.

A scratching noise comes at the back of the shop. Leaning back Rick sees a pair of rotting, searching hands at one of the open windows. Torn nails claw at the screen with no particular urgency. Finding an opening, wanting to see what’s beyond it.

Rick tucks the spark plug into his pocket and unfastens the axe from his belt. Carl watches him. The scratching at the window grows faster, frustrated. Walkers, once set to a task of any sort, can be stubborn about it. This one’s gotten fixated on the window. It doesn’t know they’re here, seems to be scratching out of—curiosity?—but it is getting agitated, and the quickening snarls it makes are drawing others—a shift of shadows beyond the frosted glass, more growls, a press of rotted hands. If one gets through the window, the rest will follow. It’s impossible to kill the one beyond it now without drawing attention. Rick glances back out the windows at the front of the shop, where the herd is thinning. If there’s any commotion, it could draw them all back at once. He wipes a hand across his forehead, brushing away sweat, and speaks quietly to Carl.

“We’re going to make a break for the car. You stay right next to me. We’re both getting in the driver’s side. You go first and get over as quick as you can.”

Carl nods. In an emergency he turns quiet and efficient—sometimes it seems like the only time he listens to Rick at all anymore.

The scratching at the window is getting louder now. More hands bang against the glass. Snarling and frustrated. Maybe they smell something beyond, or sense it. It won’t take long before their commotion draws others. Rick braces himself.

“Go.”

They move fast, keeping low—he senses Carl right at his elbow, hears Judith fussing a little. The door opened silently on the way in, but as they move across the threshold now a bell dings deep in the shop—a choppy sound like the battery’s giving out. A few walkers turn back and catch sight of them. Four yards to the truck. Rick breaks into a run, feels Carl do the same at his side. It’s a short distance—one walker between them and the door, and he puts the axe through its head. Three yards. Uninterrupted. Two. One walker off to the left, moving slow, just now noticing them—

Another, what used to be a girl younger than Carl, lurches out from behind the truck without so much as a growl of warning. Rick, acting on the swiftest of instincts, swings the axe—

Judith screams as the dead girl’s rotted teeth sink into the soft flesh of her arm. The well of blood is bright and instantaneous. At the same instant the axe connects and the walker falls.

Carl screams, too, in horror, and for one awful moment Rick thinks he’s about to freeze and collapse right there. He reaches the truck, throws open the door, grabs Carl’s arm, shoves him inside. He slams the door at their backs. Judith’s screaming is siren-like, agonized, and walkers almost to the highway turn back at the sound of it. A few lunge towards the truck and slam their hands against the hood, the windows. The front of Carl’s shirt streaked bright red with Judith’s blood and he’s crying, holding her head against his shoulder.

Rick turns the key in the ignition, slams his foot on the gas and they break free of the crowd of walkers like a fly tearing lose from sticky paper. He has to swerve to avoid them on the highway, and through a haze of horror and panic his last clear, rational thought is not to go back towards the barricades—the herd is going to follow his car, and he can’t lead them back to the rest of the group. He throws out a hand to hold Carl and wrenches the wheel around, pulling a sharp U-turn. Back into the sea of walkers. Their bodies slam against the hood. One crunches under the tires and another throws itself at the truck with such force that when it hits, the sideview mirror bends, snaps clean off.

And then they’re free of the horde. The open highway before them and the empty blue sky overhead, and Carl screaming, and Judith screaming.

 

**:::**

 

About two miles away Carl’s crying quiets down. Judith’s still going on, breathless, airless sobs even as the blood from the bite starts to slow, to turn sluggish. But Carl first stops crying, then goes quiet all together. He disengages her from his shoulder by inches, settles her on his knee, and draws his gun from his belt.

Rick slams on the brake. In their haste neither of them put on seatbelt, and the sudden stop drills them forward. Carl catches himself against the dashboard with a hand holding the gun and almost loses his grip on it and Judith shrieks again.

“What are you doing?”

Carl’s expression is blank, flat—he doesn't seem to understand the question. “We can’t let her suffer.”

“Don’t—no. No, you’re not doing that. Put your gun away.”

“Dad,” Carl says. His face blank and eyes dry and red-rimmed. “We have to.”

“ _You_ don’t have to.”

“It’s alright. I can do it. Just like you did for Mom.”

Rick thinks he has no room left for more horror but he does. He looks away, lungs frozen, catching in too little air.

Carl touches his hand. Fingers sticky with Judith's blood. “It's okay, Dad,” he says, voice practical and tender, the tone of an adult explaining a harsh truth to a child. “You were doing what you had to do.” He looks into Judith’s scrunched up and blotchy face. “It had to be somebody who loved her.” He raises the gun again, towards Judith’s temple. “Same as now. She’s suffering.”

Rick grabs the gun by the barrel and tugs it from his hand.

“Dad,” Carl protests, like they’re in the grocery store and he’s being told he can’t have ice cream.

“ _No._ ”

“We have to do it. She was bit.”

“Not you. Not right now.”

“Dad—”

“This isn’t a discussion, Carl. You’re not doing this.”

“It should be somebody who loves her.”

The sun is going down, catching the smudges on the windshield. It makes Rick’s eyes sting. He’s been trying for so long to stamp out any emotion that this one catches him unawares. He braces a hand against the steering wheel. How can he possibly do this? He knows that he can because he has to; because there’s no way around it. Because he can’t let Carl face this alone and ever look him in the eyes again.

“It will be,” he says. “But not right now. We need to—to find somewhere safe for the night. The sun’s setting and we can’t be out here.”

“It’d only take a second.”

“Stop talking like that,” Rick snaps. “Just—stop it, alright?”

Carl falls silent.

Rick looks back at the road and takes a deep breath. “I’ll handle it,” he says. “I promise she won’t suffer. You just hold her close right now and don’t think about it. I’ll handle it.”

 

**:::**

 

It’s dark and miles away when they find a house—simple white Victorian revival, a big porch, a bay window. Rick makes a quick sweep of the interior, secures the doors, and performs a swap with Carl—handing off a bag of supplies and ammo and pointing him into the other room while Rick takes Judith. Carl hesitates, only for a moment. By now Judith’s crying has quieted to a sniffle and the bite on her arm has stopped bleeding.

“She might cry again,” Carl warns. “She doesn’t know you.”

“She knows me,” Rick says, but the meaning’s clear—he doesn’t hold Judith. Hasn’t held her for more than ten seconds in all her life, and only at arm’s length, and she screamed the whole time, right in his face, like she was angry about it, angry with him—and why shouldn’t she be? But he takes her now and she makes only one shrill noise of protest, out of energy for anything more.

He tells Carl to go into the other room and takes Judith and a first aid kit into the kitchen, lights a lantern and washes off her arm in the dusty sink with some bottled water. The bite beneath the crusted blood is deep but small, a perfect half-circle of teeth marks. Judith protests the antiseptic, the Neosporin, the bandage, the necessary diaper change. She seems almost grateful to be tucked back against his arm again. It’s the first time, touching her, that his skin doesn’t crawl in revulsion. All at once his eyes sting again. It wasn’t her fault, after all. None of it was her fault.

He douses the lantern and goes to the bay window, speaking to her, the kind of nonsense you say to babies and dying people. The moon outside is almost full, the sky cloudless, the night pale and bright. The house creaks— cooling floorboards and old, settling wood. Carl moving about in the other room. Judith’s feather-thin hair has that clean new baby smell to it, and Rick leans his cheek against her head and listens as her breathing steadies and deepens with sleep. He sits there with his cheek pressed against her and waits. Waits to feel heat, fever. Waits for dawn.

 

**:::**

 

At dawn Judith’s skin is cool and she’s crying again, for food. Rick, unsure what to do, decides to give it to her, and he’s shaking up a bottle of baby formula over the sink when Carl trudges into the kitchen, eyes red-rimmed and miserable. Judith reaches for him, but he stays in the doorway, looking between her and Rick.

“Dad,” he says.

“She’s not sick.”

“Dad—She got bit.”

“I know that. You can check for yourself. There’s no fever.”

Carl takes half a step forward and stops.

“But she got bit.”

“You can check for yourself.”

Carl does. Presses his hand to her forehead, her cheek, frames her small face with both hands.

“How’s that possible?”

Rick pretends not to have heard the question. Finishing with the baby formula, he holds out the bottle. “You want to do the honors?”

Carl hesitates, then nods; he takes Judith and sits with her at the old wood table in the kitchen while she eats, his brow furrowed.

“How long has it been?”

“Fifteen hours. Sixteen, maybe.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means we got lucky, I suppose. When you’re finished up with her I should change that bandage again.”

“But everyone turns. You get bit or scratched, you die. Everyone.”

“I don’t know. Maybe the bite wasn’t deep enough—”

“Dad.”

Rick turns away from the counter at last and it’s like he’s looking into a mirror. He sees his own confusion and hope and terror and building elation reflected back in Carl’s small, pale face. Carl touches Judith’s forehead again, almost reverently.

“She’s immune,” he says. “She got bit and she’s not sick. That’s what that means. She can’t get sick. She’s not infected.”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s what that means.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We do.”Judith, in his arms, makes a muffled, unhappy noise. Carl stares at her, at Rick. And then he says, “ _Holy shit_.”

It must be some strange combination of shock and relief and exhaustion, but Rick laughs. He puts a hand to his face. “Don’t say ‘shit.’”

Carl’s laughing, too, a little hysterical. He bends his head, shoulders shaking. And then—something deepens, and he bends his head and gives a wretched sob.

Rick rushes over to him. “Hey—it’s okay. Carl, look at me. It’s alright.”

“I almost killed her.”

“You didn’t. It’s alright.”

“Dad, I was going to.”

“She’s okay. Look at me. She’s alright. She’s going to be fine. It’s alright. It’s alright.”

He winds up with Carl’s head against his shoulder, tears soaking through his shirt. They stay that way for a while, the three of them.

 

**:::**

 

But what difference does it make, at the end of the day? What does it change? They don’t have to worry about a bite or a scratch turning her, but that’s never been the greatest danger. The greatest danger is being torn apart by a horde. The greatest danger is starving to death. The greatest danger is they have a baby on the road and more than once her crying has put them in the worst kind of situation and there’s nothing to be done for it.

If the CDC was still there, if the government was still there, if there was someone anywhere working on a cure—if there was someone who even knew where to begin with a thing like that, it would matter. There’s not. There’s nowhere and nothing, and in the end it hardly matters at all.

And Rick can’t stop thinking about it.

 

**:::**

 

They double back on the highway but don’t make it far. The herd from the day before has continued on in the same direction, meandering, slow, and though they’re able to avoid it, there’s no chance of doubling back the way they came. They try a side road, and another, each blocked by overturned vehicles or fallen trees or walkers. They’re going to have to plot a different course. Rick consults one of the county maps in the glovebox but can’t make out any familiar landmarks and after awhile he puts it away.

After four days on the road they find a  boarded up cabin out in the woods. A few mason jars full of fruit and pickled fish and other things swimming in oil. The seals intact, and they smell alright. It’s not gourmet cuisine, but they’re so hungry by that point they go through three jars in a single night. Judith, at least, has baby formula for the foreseeable future. Most of that was untouched by looting, and it’s one of the few things they’re able to find consistently.

But Carl, who’s always been a practical kid, is starting to catch on to the reality of their situation, and as the days pass he grows morose. Rick tries to ask him about it; he only shrugs.

“We’re not going to see them again,” he says. “The rest of the group.”

Rick doesn’t answer. It wasn’t a question, and at this point, their relationship doesn’t allow for lies. But in the next town they pass he finds a can of spray paint, clears a stretch of highway, and draws out a star, a _3_ beside it, and and arrow pointing the direction they’re heading. Carl watches him do it, frowning.

“Like the star you used to have on your uniform?” he asks.

“That’s right. Or the one on your hat.” Both now tucked away in a duffle bag. He hasn’t looked at them for a while but knows they’re there; once in awhile his hand will happen across the cold metal and give him a bad shock, like finding a snake at the bottom of the bag. He can’t bring himself to throw them out.

“And a three—for the three of us?”

“Can’t be too long of a message, can’t just be an arrow or everyone will follow it. You think it’s good?”

Carl shrugs. “I can tell you free-handed the star,” he says, and Rick rolls his eyes and they get back into the truck.

 

**:::**

 

They drive through the days, stopping only long enough to find food, places to hunker down for the night, gas for the car, and Rick’s starting to feel resigned to their fate as well—to the loneliness of it. He wonders about the rest of the group—didn’t realize how much he would miss them. They must have figured out by now what happened. Maybe they’re still looking. Maybe they too are starting to give up.

 

**:::**

 

There’s a town full low square buildings, just off the highway. A few walkers making indolent circles around cars left out in the street. They park the truck; Rick handles the most immediate threats with an axe, and doubles back to lean against the passenger window and talk to Carl.

“I’m going to check some of the shops, see if there’s anything we can use,” he says. “Let’s say an hour and a half. You have that watch I gave you?”

Carl shakes his head.

“No, you don’t have it?”

“No, I’m going with you.”

“You’re staying here with your sister.”

“There’s too many side streets. You need somebody to watch your back.”

“There’s too many side streets—you’re staying here.”

Carl gives him a look, exasperated and steady and stubborn. The sight sets off a sudden, sharp pang in Rick’s chest. How many times he’d seen the same expression on Lori’s face.

“Dad. You know it’s illegal to leave your kids in a car on a hot day?”

Rick almost laughs. The day is unseasonably warm to be sure, but no more than sixty degrees.

Carl, noticing his reaction, says, “It'll be hotter in the car with the windows up.”

“So roll the windows down.”

“They’re electric. And it’s dangerous to leave them down, in case of walkers. And if I leave the key in the ignition, it’ll run out the battery.”

“Who told you all that?”

“Dale did.” Something shifts momentarily in his expression, but he raises his chin. “I’ll stay right behind you. I can handle this.”

Rick gives him a steady look which he hopes masks his amusement.“You’ve thought this through, haven’t you?” Carl nods once, a single sharp decided movement, and there’s no arguing with that—well, there is, but Rick doesn’t think it’s worth it. The town’s quiet, after all, and Carl’s been through worse. He’ll keep an eye out for places to hide or hold up if something happens and be twice as cautious, but they should be fine.

There’s a few gas stations in town, all different prices on their signs. The lowest price one is almost empty and the high-priced one is choked with cars. People ran out the cheap option when things started getting bad, and cared less and less when it got really bad. Even with the dead coming back to life, people were still on the lookout for a good deal right up until the last.

They move on through the town—a store of farm and garden supplies. The tallest building around, an old real estate building, is only four stories. A thrift store. A jewelry place. The empty, boarded up remnants of a Thai restaurant that was probably in the same state long before the world ended. A walker making its way across the parking lot—Rick’s ready to deal with it when its foot gets caught in a storm drain and falls. The crunch of snapping bone. Stuck, oblivious to its shattered leg hanging beneath it, it reaches towards them, snarling. They keep a wide berth from it and move on.

What the town _doesn’t_ seem to have is a grocery store, any kind of food market. Rick checks briefly the side streets, but the bulk of the retail is located all on the main stretch through town, and beyond is all residential. He stands in the middle of the main street and thinks. This place doesn’t look like it got hit as hard as some of the others, and there may be food to find in the pantries, something overlooked. But it’ll take longer to check, probably mean holing up here for the night, and though the town is quiet, it’s far from empty or safe. The highway goes straight through it and there are few vantage points a view in more than two directions. But with the luck they’ve had finding resources lately, it’s not the kind of place they can afford to pass by.

They’ve made due with worse, Rick reminds himself. He says, “Let’s get the stuff out of the truck—”

The bullet catches him across the cheek, grazes by his ear. He hears the crack of the shot, and, belated, feels the pain a second later.

He throws himself down behind a car, and to Carl, he yells, “Get down, behind the cars!” It’s redundant; Carl’s down, his back pressed flat against underside of an overturned Subaru. Judith, startled by the sound of the shot, starts to cry—a little uncertainly, like she’s more confused than upset. Rick raises a hand to touch his cheek and his fingers come away sticky with blood.

Another shot rings out. Punches a neat hole in the blue Audi to his right.

“Dad?” Carl’s face is white, his voice shaking. He clutches Judith against his shoulder with one hand, his gun in the other. “Are you—”

“I’m fine.” The bullet did more than graze him—there’s a slice a quarter of an inch deep on his cheek. But it’s lucky. Another quarter of an inch and he wouldn’t be having this conversation.

The shots came from somewhere behind them. Rick, estimating the angle, figures it’s higher than they are, but not so high that the cars provide no shelter at all. Thirty feet up, fifty. He dares a glance back—the sun’s in his eyes, and he can’t look up. The tall wood real-estate building he noticed earlier towers behind them, dark and silent. A sign on its side reads, _If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Right Now!_ Another shot rings out, and Rick ducks back.

“What’s the matter?” A man’s voice. “You cryin’ behind that car, huh?”

A walker from the parking lot across from them lurches over, drawn by the sound of Judith’s screaming. Rick doesn’t remember drawing his gun from his belt, but he levels it, takes the headshot. The noise doesn’t matter at this point. The walker falls back, a smattering of brains on the concrete, and Judith screams louder in spite of Carl’s frantic attempts to shush her.

“That was a good shot!” calls the man in the tower. He laughs—a loud, raspy, smoker’s laugh, and Rick can’t help but think the sound is familiar. “How much you wanna bet I’m better?”

“We’re just passing through,” Rick calls. “This is your turf—we’ll be on our way. No one has to die today. We can all walk away from this.”

That reedy laugh again. “Sure thing. How about you two c’mon out and we’ll talk about it, real polite like? C’mon, lemme see them pretty little faces—”

Another voice in the tower, muffled, cuts across, “What the hell are you doing, man? They got a _kid_ out there—”

The two devolve into arguing, talking across each other. Rick check his gun. Five shots left. He reaches into his pocket for ammo and realizes with a plunge of horror that he left the box back at the car. Stupid— _stupid_. There must be another twenty rounds for the Python there. The difference between twenty and five is all the world. He’d been focused on the axe, on minimizing sound.

A handful of walkers stagger up the street towards them, emerging from empty shopfronts and alleyways, from behind cars and broken windows—their interest drawn by the shots, by Judith’s crying.

Rick looks across at Carl, says quietly, “How many rounds you got?”

Carl holds up his hand, fingers spread, thumb tucked against his palm. Four. He indicates his pocket, flashes his hand again. Eight in all. Rick nods. They have, between the two of them, thirteen shots to deal with incoming walkers, the sniper at their backs, whoever else is in that building with them. He hazards another glance back over his shoulder and has to look away again, eyes stinging. The sun’s setting behind the building, makes it impossible to look at straight on. The building itself is a shadowed block against the light. Rick knows he’s not getting an accurate shot from here, can’t even guess where their gunman _is_. He needs a better angle, but a better angle will put him into the line of fire.

“If we just stay behind the cars—” Carl whispers, but the nearest car is twenty feet away, too great a distance to risk. And beyond that, the distance is greater still. If they could get behind a building it would give them some cover, but that would be a sprint of thirty feet at least, and it’s a blind corner. They could run straight into a herd of walkers.

“I’m going to make a break for that building,” Rick says. “I can get in through one of the windows, and I’ll have a better chance of dealing with this inside than I do out here.”

“What?” Carl’s voice is thin, frightened. “No!”

“Yes. You’re going to lay down some cover fire, can you do that? Do you know what that is?”

“Dad—”

“I’ll fire first—one shot—and then you fire. Don’t hesitate. Keep yourself behind the car. Aim at the building. You don’t have to hit anything. You use up the four rounds you’ve got loaded, you stop. If I’m not at the building by then make a break for the car over there. If I am, you stop, reload, and wait. If I’m not back—if something happens to me, you take your sister and go as quick as you can. Zigzag. Don’t look back. Two bullets for walkers. You get down to two shots, you save them. Do you understand why?”

“Dad, _no_.”

“Carl—I need to hear you say you understand what I’m saying.”

Carl opens his mouth to argue, then stops abruptly, the realization falling across his face like the sun going behind a cloud. “I understand.” He looks up the street at the shambling figures drawing nears and says without inflection, “Go.”

Rick draws in a deep breath and holds it in his lungs. His hands steady. He nods to Carl, turns, and fires.

It’s a rough approximation of angle. He doesn’t expect to hit his target, and he doesn’t. But he hears glass shatter in one of the high windows, and the arguing stops with a quick curse. He runs, head down, even as he hears the crack of shots from Carl’s gun at his back. Two walkers stand between him and the building—he catches one in the side of the head with the axe—the blade sticks in its skull with a crunch and will not be withdrawn, and he can’t afford to stop long enough to pull it free, still within range of fire from the roof. The second walker lurches towards him, nightmarishly fast, mouth open and shreds of bloody flesh between its teeth. No time to come up with a better plan, Rick fires a shot inches from its face and it crumples.

Three shots.

He reaches the building, throws his back against the wall it and looks out from the shadow to where Carl’s moving behind the car to reload. The voice from the roof shouts again. Rick hears another round from the rifle, more shouting, that second voice, but can’t pick out any of the words.

There’s a boarded-up window to his right, a broken brick beneath it. He breaks the glass with the brick and pries loose the nails of one board with the blade of a pocket knife, kicks another and it splinters, falls. He ducks his head and squeezes through the opening.

Inside, the sounds of the street are muffled. Thick shadows fill the hallway beyond the window—it takes Rick’s eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom after the brightness of the day. Someone was renovating in here when the world ended, and left behind dried out paint cans, sheets of plastic laid down, power tools. One wall with a great big hole in it reminds Rick of the houses of meth heads back in the day. Beyond lies a maze of low rooms, sharp corners anything could be hiding behind. Rick moves as cautiously as he can, mindful of Judith’s screaming outside, walkers, the shots from what now sounds like a shotgun upstairs. Their assailant must have run out of ammo for the rifle.

The first floor is clear, empty. The first step on the staircase creaks underfoot. Rick winces, presses himself against the side of the wall and to his relief the stairs are quieter there. It was the same in his house when he was a kid—he must have slipped out a dozen times, heart pounding, using that trick.

The second floor is brighter, the windows left bare, and emptier. Echoing. Another array of rooms someone must have put in right before the end. They’re too clean, painted up in stark eggshell white. The whole floor is arranged in a horseshoe around a common area with a sixties style kitchenette, black and white tiles and ancient fridge, an array of tools laid out on the counter, screwdrivers, hammers, a power drill, a heavy-looking silver wrench.

Light shifts across the floorboards ahead. A blind corner. Rick shrinks back, raises the gun. The motion doesn’t come again but he has a sense of someone on the other side of the wall, waiting just as he’s waiting. He stands stock still, for one second, two, a minute. More gunfire from the roof. Carls and Judith are still out on the street, and he can’t afford to wait any longer, can’t get locked into a game of cat and mouse now. He braces himself, finger on the trigger, and rounds the corner and raises the gun and fires.

A section of drywall explodes in a spray of dust, but the man on the other side of the wall isn’t where he judged, and moves too fast, rushing forward, head lowered like a charging bull. They crash backwards together. Rick get the gun between them, angles it up—but his second shot is deflected as a knife scrapes the barrel of the gun, knocking it aside, forcing it out of his hand. He catches a blow to the stomach, smells the choking odor of sweat and cigarette smoke. Striking out blindly, and his knuckles scrape teeth. His assailant snarls—

The glint of a the knife drawing back, and Rick barely has time to duck away into opening left by the man’s recoil. He hears the solid crunch of the blade sinking into the wall where his head had been a second before.

They stagger apart— Rick looks up and gets his first full view of the man and freezes.

“Holy shit,” Merle Dixon says, “it’s Officer Friendly!” The knife, strapped to a metal casing where his hand should be, comes free from the wall with one quick motion, bits of plaster and drywall dust falling in its wake. He stands swaying a little and grins. “How the hell are you? Long way from Atlanta!”

Another crack of shotgun fire sounds from above. Rick stands back, breathing hard—in the scuffle he lost track of where the gun wound up. He sees the glint of the barrel a pace away, almost under the fridge. One shot left.

Merle takes a single step in his direction. His pupils are wide and dark, wild-looking the way they were when they first met, and if anything about the situation troubles him, he gives no sign of it. “I’d just about given up on ever seein’ you again, man! Ain’t life funny?”

“Merle,” Rick says, trying to be reasonable even as he glances towards the gun again, “listen to—”

Merle laughs, and lunges forward.

Rick ducks to avoid another swipe of Merle’s knife at his face and throws himself towards the gun. He catches Merle’s full weight against his shoulder and his back slams into the edge of the half-finished counter. The knife draws back again, and he grabs hold of Merle’s arm with both hands to keep it from his throat. They struggle—Rick receives another winding blow to the stomach and his fingers close over the blade of the knife just as Merle spits in his face. Rick recoils in disgust, but even as he does, the knife comes free of the leather straps holding it. He manages to turn it, to get his fingers around the handle—

He strikes out blindly and feels the knife connect. The blade slices length-wise across Merle Dixon’s face. The spray of blood is instantaneous, dramatic, everywhere. Merle staggers backwards, screaming.

“You motherfucker! You son of a bitch! I’ll—!”

Rick moves to press his advantage, but Merle moves faster than he’s expecting, grabs hold of a fistful of his hair and _yanks_. Rick tries to twist away, to catch his balance, and they both slip in blood. The blunt metal casing on Merle’s other arm catches him square in the face and the world is white and ringing. The knife falls from his hand. The second blow misses his face only because he falls against the counter, to the blood-slick tiles.

The gun—somewhere else, kicked away and lost in the fight, under a counter. Rick makes a grab for the knife instead. He sees the sticky glinting blade under the fridge. The toe of Merle’s boot catches him in the stomach. The knife is inches from his hand—

He doesn’t register the obliterating pain in the side of his head until he’s already face down on the bloody tiles. His vision swims, hazy, and he’s aware of Merle standing over him, but it seems distant, something happening on TV, something happening to someone else. He sees the glint of some dull metal in Merle’s hand and it takes him a moment to recognize it: the wrench that was laying on the counter.

Merle says something. The words a nonsensical jumble of noises and sounds. Rick’s swimming mind drudges up the word ‘concussion.’ There’s a ringing in his ears, a sound like crying. Judith. Carl’s voice, from a long way off, and yet Rick hears the urgency in it, hears that he’s not yelling, but screaming. He knows he has to get up, to see if they’re alright. He makes and effort to push himself up onto all fours and Merle brings the wrench down on his side. Rick hears ribs crack with a sound like someone stepping on a cheap toy: a brittle, plasticky crunch. His arm caves beneath him. A scream he registers belatedly his own.

Judith’s crying is closer. Rick tries again to push himself up, yells, “Carl, go! Get out of here!”

Merle, over him, gives a raspy laugh and spits again, some mixture of blood and foul-smelling phlegm hitting the floor next to Rick’s face. “Listen to Officer Friendly, kid!” he calls. “You don’t want to see this!”

He brings the wrench down again. The pain this time is dull, nauseating, distant. It can’t get any worse. Nerve-endings already firing as intensely as they can, and this blow, the one that follows, the next, the next, is more of the same. Rick feels like an outside observer again, like he’s watching something happen to someone who, impossibly, unfortunately, happens to be him.

His thoughts through the pain are slippery, but clear. He’s going to die—not in some heroic way, not in any way that means something or helps anyone. And Carl—Judith—He can’t get to them, can’t help them. And all the other times he’s failed them are nothing to this final, unforgivable failure.

Merle, over him, raises the wrench again—and pauses. There’s a sound from somewhere in the building of a door shutting, and Judith’s crying is behind it. Merle shouts, “Get outta here, kid! You ain’t gonna to get the drop on me carryin’ around a crying baby! We both know that, so let’s cut the shit!”

A shadow shifts at his back. Small, slight. The faint _click_ of a round going into the chamber of a revolver. Carl, without Judith, bracing the gun with both hands, says, “Yeah. I know.”

Merle, hearing the click of the hammer, freezes. “That’s good,” he says, sounding amused. “I’ll give it to you: that’s good.”

“Carl—get out of here—” Another kick catches Rick in the stomach and the taste of blood heavy at the back of his throat. Consciousness dips and swims, blackens, fragments. He hears Carl yelling something as though from a long ways off.

Merle turns on the spot, hands raised in a mocking gesture of surrender. Then he lets out a low whistle.

“Holy _hell_! You’re that little shit from Atlanta! Hey—” He starts forwards, and Carl raises the gun, taking a step back. “Hey,” Merle says, voice softening. He lowers his hands, dropping the wrench down to his side. “I know somebody who’s looking for you.”

Carl doesn’t answer, doesn’t lower the gun, doesn’t blink. “Get away from my dad.”

“Your dad?” Merle says—he laughs again. “Aw, hell, this is too good. Look, how’s about you put that down and we’ll talk, hmm? Just me and you?” When Carl still doesn’t move, he says, “What—You think you’re gonna shoot me, is that it? You ever killed a man before? It takes balls, and I’m bettin’ yours ain’t even dropped yet. And even if you do, he ain’t going anywhere. You’re up shit creek without a paddle either way. So why don’t you save yourself a bullet and—”

“I won’t tell you again,” Carl says, but his voice wavers.

Rick tries to speak, to tell him again to go, and he can’t. He sees the glint of the knife under the fridge. It’s a dizzying effort to reach for it. His fingers don’t seem to want to close around the handle. He hears Merle saying something. The shotgun fire from the roof has ceased. That means something, Rick’s pretty sure, but at the moment what matters is the knife, finally, _finally_ between his fingers.

Merle is saying, “You go on and take that shot if you’re—”

Rick shoves himself up and slashes the knife with all his strength at whatever happens to be nearest—the backs of Merle’s legs happen to be nearest. The blade slices through dirty denim pants, through skin and muscle and a tendon with a springy _snap_. Merle screams and falls backwards and the wrench hits the floor with a solid sound and the two of them tangle inelegantly together, struggling. The room seems to expand and contract around them like a pair of lungs, and Rick's vision wavers—he can hear Carl shouting, Merle swearing fiercely inches from his ear, and strikes out blindly again with the knife. He can’t tell if it connects. Merle grabs hold of a handful of his hair, fingers painfully tight at the roots, and hauls him up—and slams his head against the edge of the kitchen counter.

The world goes dark in an instant. When it returns it’s with a kind of underwater, dreamlike quality, everything twitching and jittering strangely, brightening, darkening. Carl’s still holding the gun in both hands, still only a few feet away, but his voice seems to come from a long way off, a strange trick of acoustics. Rick registers the knife gone from his hand, edge of the blade pressed against his throat.

Merle Dixon’s foul breath against his ear as he speaks. “How good’s your aim, kid?”

Rick tries to twist out of Merle’s grip only to be tugged back, roughly. His vision is doing a strange trick, like the end of a silent movie: a circle of blackness drawing in around the edges of it, shrinking, closing in on itself, erasing the world. _That’s all, folks_ … He fixes his gaze on Carl in a burst of teeth-gritting effort. “Take the shot.”

Merle isn’t laughing anymore. “Dear old dad ain’t long for this world anyway, you think? You go on ahead, you miss that shot and you put him out of his misery—”

“Carl—”

The knife digs against his throat—the blade about to break skin.

Carl’s hands are shaking on the gun. “Stop it!” His voice thin and trembling. “Stop—”

The knife presses tighter. Carl’s eyes flick briefly towards the hallway to his right—something about his expression changes, goes blank and shocked. He lowers the gun.

Rick tries to yell to him again— _Take the shot, take the shot_ —

—a hot spray of blood hits his face. A deafening round of revolver fire. Rick’s stunned eardrums flatline. Merle’s grip on him go boneless all at once. The knife hits the floor. Merle Dixon joins it on the tiles with a wet, solid thud. What’s left of his head a gorey pulp.

Rick twists away from the corpse, vision darkening with the effort. He tries to turn, to see what’s in the hallway, but he can’t manage to life his head. Carl, in the doorway opposite, stands shocked. His mouth falls open, forming a word it’s impossible to hear. Everything in ringing, echoing slow motion. Carl's hands fall to his sides, the gun unfired—he give a little jump, a start—glances at Rick again, at the space behind him, and then he slips back into the hallway again, running, finally running. Getting out of this place, away from what’s left of Merle—back to the cars, past walkers. He’s a smart kid. Tough. He can do it. Rick’s darkening thoughts follow that path—down the stairs, the cluttered halls, the broken window, out into the light of midday, and, running, into the sun, over tarmac…

There’s a touch, a hint of pressure, two fingers pressed against his neck. Checking for a pulse. He hears a voice that isn’t Carl’s.Then a sudden sickening lurch as he’s jerked upright, pressed back against the edge of a cupboard. Reality and consciousness slam back into nauseating clarity and he pitches to the side and throws up. A foul taste of blood and bile in his throat. And all he feels is annoyance, that dying can’t be peaceful like people talk about, it has to be like _this._  He swipes the back of his hand across his mouth, an automatic gesture, and raises his aching head at last to look up.

He blinks. He blinks again.

“Shane?”

This is what people always talk about. Dying dreams, and all that. Why couldn’t it be Lori? Shane looks just as he did the day he left. Cargo pants and a black tee. He doesn’t look any older, any different, and when their eyes meet, he smiles—that same old Shane smile, a little boyish, a little wry.

“Hey,” he says. “You look like hell, man.”

There’s a commotion from the hall, and Rick glances up to see Carl there, holding Judith tight against his chest. Her small face is blotchy from crying.

“Dad?”

Rick tries to answer him and can’t. Everything darkens rapidly again, and he feels himself starting to pitch to the side. The hands on his shoulders tighten, anchoring pressure.

His hallucination is talking. “Carl—grab that knife. There’s a gun under the table. Get that, too.”

Carl’s voice is shaking apart. “Is he going to die?”

There’s a creak from the stairs, a snarling, choked up noise of something no longer human.

“Is—There’s so much blood—”

“Get the knife and the gun, and put them on your belt,” Shane says. “Do it now.”

Carl moves, quick and shaking, wide-eyed. His small chest rising and falling in short, panicky breaths. It’s okay, Rick wants to tell him. It’s going to be okay. His vision strobes in and out. He wonders if he’s going to throw up again.

“Is he going to die?”

“Can you shoot?” Shane asks.

“Yes.”

“That’s good. I’m going to need you to. What’s her name?”

“Judith.”

“Put Judith’s head against your shoulder and cover her ears. We’re going out in that hall. It’s two lefts and a right and some stairs. I need you to cover us. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“If I tell you to go, you go without us and you don’t look back. You understand me?”

“Is he going to die?”

“No one’s going to die. But you’ve got to do what I say, you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Rick—you still with us?”

Rick has an impression there’s a question being asked and he ought to answer it, but it seems ridiculous, after all, and he doesn’t want to worry Carl by talking to a ghost again. He’s already done enough of that for a lifetime…

Shane gives him another shake, jolting, stomach-turning, but the world clears and brightens for a moment.

“C’mon, man, I need you to rally— _right_ _now_. Put your arm around my shoulders. We’re going to have to run. It’s not far. I need you to help me out. Carl needs you. Come on.”

It’s Carl’s name that does it. Somehow, teeth-grittingly, Rick manages to get his legs under him and stand. Everything lurches, takes on the quality of some strange nightmare realm—too bright and unreal, the floor rocking under his feet. It’s like trying to stand upright in a snowglobe tossed this way and that by the careless hands of a child.

There’s one moment—one crystal clear moment of startling clarity—of looking Shane full in the face and realizing this is no dream.

The hallway is dark. They don’t so much run as they do stagger. Rick barely keeping his feet, aware he wouldn’t be at all if he weren’t leaning against Shane. The pain in his ribs impossibly, shatteringly intense, and spots bloom in his vision, fade again, and it takes every ounce of willpower he’s ever had to keep his feet moving. His boots slippery with blood. The snarl of walkers at their back. The bang of a gunshot. Judith shrieks. Stairs. Knocking against the walls, darkness spiralling and swelling. Another gunshot. Shane yelling, incomprehensible sound. The four of them, a carousel lurch of panic, of nothing, of falling. A door opening. Another gunshot, another snarl, another scream. The world pitches forward, and Rick can’t brace himself against it, can only anticipate an impact with the floor that never comes.

 

**:::**

 

He’s driving. Crossing a black road at night and an ad plays over radio through thorns of static: “If you lived here, you’d be home right now.” He feels a hand on the back of his neck. Someone familiar speaks to him and he says, _—I can go a little longer_ , and he lifts his gun and clicks back the hammer. A door slams. And then he is sinking his hands into Lori’s hair and she takes his wrist and they move through a narrow corridor where silver and brass stars and numbers hang whirling from the ceiling, spears of light glinting as they catch the sun and burn with it, like a thousand small, cold fires.

 

**:::**

 

The first thing he sees is yellow-white flame of an oil lamp nearby. Suspended in the darkness, the light strikes his eyes and sends a flare of pain to his head as though he’s been struck anew. Rick raises a hand with a hiss to brace against the spot, and in an instant Carl’s at his side.

“Dad? Are you alright?”

He’s sitting up against a wall. Propped sideways against a pile of cushions stripped off a couch which sits barren across the empty room. Smell of plaster and paint. A window opposite, darkness beyond—a hastily boarded up door to his right, another door left open beside it, leading into some unlit side room.

“Dad?”

“I’m alright.” His throat is dry, and he tastes blood at the back of it, making him cough. Blood on his clothes, too, stiff and crusting. The pain in his head is the closest he’ll ever come to seeing the blue of a candle flame from the inside of it. “Are you—Where’s Judith?”

“She’s right here. She’s fine. We’re both fine.”

Rick starts to say something more, to ask another question, but another voice cuts across,

“You were out for a while. Weren’t too sure you were going to wake up.”

His first impression of Shane is the heavy fall of those stupid combat boots on the bare floorboards. A sense of motion from the shadowed corner, and he steps into view. He looks, impossibly, just as he did the night he left—even wearing the same clothes. It’s as though he only stepped forward in time, departing that night from Hershel’s farm and arriving here, having forwent all the living in between.

Rick stares openly, too shocked and exhausted to do anything else. He might have an easier time accepting it had a piece of furniture come alive and spoken to him.

Shane’s gaze skips away and he crosses the room and goes and kneels down beside—another impossible detail—that black sheriff’s bag he always carried everywhere, draws open the zip and rummages through the contents.

“Pretty crazy, right?” Carl says.

“Pretty crazy.” He senses Carl looking at him, scanning for signs of distress or pain and trying to suss out his reaction. He makes an effort at arranging his expression, trying to give nothing away.

“Is your head okay? Shane said you had a concussion.”

“Probably right about that.” He raises a hand to inspect the damage. His fingers prod a tender spot on the right side of his skull. He touches what feels like a small depression, and it’s like a hair dryer dropped into a bathtub—a hard jolt of electricity, the world flashing, turning into a photo negative for an instant.

Carl reaches for him. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” Rick gets out. He knows it sounds unconvincing. By increments, by pulses, the pain clears. His vision clears, too, and he expects to look up and find Shane gone, an apparition, a part of a bad dream—but he remains, solid, here. Real.

“I don’t want you to worry,” Rick says. He doesn’t look at Carl while addressing him. “I’ll be alright.”

Carl says, “I heard you’re not supposed to let people fall asleep if they have a concussion, but we couldn’t wake you up. I thought—”

Shane finishes shifting through his bag and stands with two bottles of pills in his hand. “Carl—you do me a favor and give your dad some space for a minute, alright?”

And Carl, who’s been questioning and arguing with every single thing Rick asks of him for the past three months, falls back at once. Shane crosses the room, gathering up a quarter-full gallon of water. He drops it to the floor in the space Carl vacated at Rick’s side, measures out a handful of pills, and holds them out.

“Take these.”

Rick regards him without moving.

“What is it?”

Shane’s making direct eye contact with the wall a few feet away. “Painkillers. Antibiotics.”

“That bad?”

“You tell me.”

“What are the antibiotics for?”

“You got an open wound and you were laying face down in Merle Dixon’s blood. Want to make sure you didn’t pick up anything nasty.”

“I think antibiotics are going to be pretty useless when it comes to—”

“Would you just take it? It’s the best I got. _Jesus_.”

And that, more than anything, is proof this is real. Rick accepts the pills. It hurts to raise the water jug to his mouth to swallow them, but he manages. The effort puts another stabbing pain in his ribs. He waits for it to fade.

“You mind telling me what happened, exactly?” he says, when he can.

“You don’t remember?”

“Some of it.”

“You got your ass handed to you by Merle Dixon, for starters.”

“I remember that part.” He sits up, wincing, bracing a hand against his side as he does, and listens—to the troubling catch of his breath in his chest, the creaking of the building’s old timbers, the toothless whine of a gust of wind outside. And farther off, somewhere on the floor below them, the muffled shuffle and thud of many footsteps.

He looks towards the door and as he does his gaze catches Shane’s. A mistake. They both turn quickly away.

“It’s secure,” Shane says. “Merle and I had it pretty well boarded over before—Well, I reinforced it, anyway. It’ll hold.”

“You and Merle,” Rick repeats. A filthy canvas tote sits in the opposite corner, so stained its original color is impossible to guess. “All that shooting up on the roof—”

“You know how he was.”

Rick does, and can’t figure it out. “The two of you were travelling together?”

“Sure. Made ourselves little friendship bracelets and everything.” Shane passes a hand through his hair—he doesn’t seem to be able to stand entirely still. The moment his hand falls away he raises it to his mouth again, running his thumbnail across his lips, the remnant of an old childhood nail biting habit. He speaks almost absently, “Wound up with the same group a while back. Just one of those coincidences. Split off together a few months ago looking for—well, _you_ , believe it or not. And Daryl. Mostly Daryl. I didn’t mention… Didn’t reckon he’d have taken it too well if I told the guy who’d handcuffed him to a roof was with the same group. Figured we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.” He trails off.

“You killed him,” Rick says.

“Sure did.” Shane clears his throat and kneels down. “Alright. Concussion. You know the drill.”

Without another word of explanation, he launches into a series of tests—basic questions, mostly. _What’s your name? Address before all this went down? When’s Carl’s birthday?_ He produces a small flashlight from his pocket, clicks it on. The beam is painful, too bright, and Rick at first flinches away before steadying himself and managing to stare into it. Shane looks between his eyes, brow furrowed. He clicks the flashlight off, holds up two fingers instead in moves them in a slow, straight path from side to side. All this in silence, frowning—his pose cautious, as though he’s reaching into a thicket and trying to avoid being snagged by thorns. Rick complies with each test, as miserable being in a dentist’s chair. He’s aware of Carl watching from across the room, and wishes he could sink back into the wall, away from Shane’s reluctant proximity. Away from the reality of it all.

Finishing up, Shane gets abruptly to his feet and goes to a window, looking out at the darkened streets below. “I’d say you got pretty lucky, so far as I can tell. Probably blacked out more from the pain than the concussion. Broken bones, and your head is—” He breaks off, flicks a glance in Carl’s direction, and finishes mildly, “messed up. But otherwise you got off easy. I’d say in a week or two—”

Rick catches in a breath between gritted teeth, gathers his feet under himself, and stands, bracing himself back against the wall. Shane stops talking mid-sentence, startled.

“Hey, hey—Take it easy—”

He and Carl start forward, and Rick holds up a hand to ward them away.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you kidding me right now—”

He reaches out, and Rick jerks away. The thought of Shane touching him again is borderline repulsive. He grits out, “ _Don’t_ —” which he considers a show of remarkable restraint. What he wants to say is more along the lines of, _Get the hell away from me_.

Carl says, “Dad—”

There’s a door off to the left, open. Rick points to it.

“Is that room secure?”

Carl’s brow furrows. “Why—”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Take your sister and go in there and shut the door. I’ll be along in a minute.”

Carl catches in a breath to retort, or question, but Rick cuts across,

“ _Now._ ”

It’s louder than he intended, harsher than he intended, and Carl jolts into action. Gathers up Judith and goes. He looks confused, scared, and Rick registers a momentary stab of guilt. Then the door clicks closed and he’s alone with Shane. They look at each other across the narrow space between them and the silence ticks on—one second, two.

Shane speaks first, his voice low. “What was that about?”

Rick has the sudden, reprehensible desire to laugh. He leans back against the wall, breathing around the pain in his side. “Pretty good show you made just now.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“All the friendly concern. Antibiotics. ‘A week or two.’ The last minute heroic rescue. How long were you standing out in that hallway, anyway?”

“What?”

“If Carl hadn’t shown up when he did, you’d have just stood back a while longer and let Merle get on with his business—wouldn’t you?”

They look at each other across the cramped, unfinished room, neither moving. A slow, incredulous smile spreads across Shane’s face, like he thinks it’s a joke—he ducks his head, when he looks up again the smile is gone and his voice is cold.

“You know what, man, I’m gonna do you another favor and write all this off as you takin’ a pretty good hit to the head and not thinking too clearly on what you’re saying.”

“I’m thinking clearly.”

“Are you? Then here’s one more test for that there concussion: You remember what ‘asshole’ means?”

“Right, Shane—of the two of us, _I’m_ the asshole here—”

Shane slams his hand against wall, hard—a huge noise echoing in the empty room, and Rick flinches in spite of himself, breaks off. A shallow dent left behind in the drywall.

Something on the other side of the boarded-up door hears it, too—gives a sudden snarl and scratches at the wood. Rick reaches for his gun but it isn’t at his belt. He looks back at Shane, at the shotgun leaning against the corner beside him. Their eyes meet again, another mistake.

Shane shakes his head and goes over to the black bag on the floor again, kneels down beside it, draws out the Colt Python and slides it across the floor. “It’s not loaded—which has got nothing to do with me, if that’s the _next_ thing you’re plannin’ on accusing me of. You wasted all your damn ammo.”

The gun lies between them on the floor. Rick makes no move to retrieve it. Just the thought of bending to pick it up lights up vast and intricate networks of pain in his head, his side. Shane continues digging through bag without looking up, retrieves matches and a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, tears the foil off, goes to the window, throws it open.

It’s such a startling sight that it momentarily breaks through Rick’s anger. “You smoke now?”

The rasp of a striking match. Shane dips his head, brings the cigarette to the flame.

“Tryin to.”

“Since when?”

“Christ, Rick, I don’t know—Since the world went to hell?”

Not that long, Rick thinks. There’s the glow of a red ember, and Shane shakes out the match, flicks it out the open window with a kind of practiced disregard that’s not really him, either—an gesture that has something of Merle Dixon about it. Shane used to help put together those dull anti-drug assemblies in high school. Always claimed he felt like he needed a shower after being in a smoker’s house. Hated the smell of cigarettes on a woman’s clothing, claimed it was the biggest turn-off he could think of. Rick watches him, startled, a little shaken—he has to remind himself sharply that he doesn’t care, that he couldn’t care less.

There’s a gust of sharp, cool air from the window. Smoke curling around in it, and the lantern on the table gutters, sends shadows dancing weirdly around the unfinished walls. Shane says, “Carl told me what happened with Lori.”

Rick looks away—swallows hard around the taste of blood at the back of his throat and when he doesn’t respond, Shane goes on, speaking slowly, each word deliberate, “Said it was no one’s fault, nothing that doctor of yours could do… Just one of those things. No one’s fault.”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Yeah, I figure you don’t.” He flicks from ash from the cigarette out the window, and all at once Rick is as sharply angry as he was the first time he figured it out—as angry as he was when Lori first told him. The intensity of his own reaction surprises him—if he had a loaded gun, now, he would draw it. He looks at the empty one on the floor, teeth gritted.

Shane doesn’t notice—if he does, he doesn’t react. He gives a humorless laugh. “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world…” He seems to be speaking half to himself—then, slanting a look at the floor near Rick’s feet, “Listen: maybe we didn’t part on the best’ve terms, and I don’t know what—what kinda screwed up idea about me you got between then and now, but what you just said—”

“It doesn’t matter.” He doesn’t want to hear any justifications. Doesn’t want to understand, doesn’t want to sympathize.

“The hell you mean, _it don’t matter_? I don’t like what you're accusing—”

“Well, that’s tough, isn’t it?” Rick says, the pain in his head and in his side worsening by the second. He needs Shane to _shut up_ , needs to say this while he’s still on his feet—Before his resolve can waver, he gets out,“It doesn’t matter. I want you to take Carl and Judith and get them out of here.”

Shane’s gaze jumps up to his face. Then he gets it, and turns quickly away, staring out the window again. It’s too late; Rick’s already seen his expression. A flicker of eagerness, of vindictive envy. It almost breaks his resolve, almost makes him recoil. He doesn’t want to be saying what he’s saying, knows he has to say it anyway. He summons up that old familiar frost to lay over his emotions and speaks practically,

“The town’s full of walkers. The building, too. And you said it yourself: I’m barely standing. We leave this room, we’re going to have to run, and I can’t run. I don’t want Carl to see—He won’t be happy, but you have to get them out of here. They can’t die here. You and I don’t have to talk about anything that happened—it doesn’t matter now. But you owe me this. You have to keep them safe. Carl can take you to the truck. It’s red, parked over at the other side of town—”

“I can’t do that.”

“It’s exactly what you want to do and I’m giving you permission. You planning on making me beg?”

“I can’t. I made a promise.”

“Whatever you might have promised Lori—”

“Not her. _Carl_.” The cigarette has burned out almost to his fingers. He tosses it outside, slides the window closed and leans back against the glass, arms crossed, addressing the floor again. “Just now. He made me promise we weren’t leavin’ you here. And you know what? I didn’t feel much like arguing with him.”

Rick winces at this—a rising pain that has nothing to do with his injuries.

“I’ll talk to Carl,” he says. “I’ll tell him the way it is.”

“The way it is? You think it’s gonna be that easy? We could both talk ‘til we’re blue in the face and he’ll never leave this room while you’re still in it. He’s your kid, man: he’s stubborn as all hell. And if I try’n drag him out of here kicking and screaming, how far you figure we’ll get?”

Rick remains silent to this, has no answer.

“Soon as you’re healed up enough to walk I can cover you from the window while you get back to your car. Set off some flares to keep the biters off you until you’re clear. That’s what we’re doing.”

“Shane—”

“I don’t like it anymore than you, but that’s what we’re doing. Now you want to sit down and shut up for a while?”

Though he hates the rest of this plan, Rick has to admit this last part is pretty good advice, if only because he’s going to fall if he doesn’t. He lowers himself carefully against the wall, grimacing as pain flares up his side.

Shane goes to door to the side room, throws it open.

“Carl, you do me a favor and keep your dad company for the rest of the night, okay?”

There’s a shuffle, Carl hurrying over; he stands in the doorway with Judith and Shane puts a hand on his shoulder. The sight leaves Rick almost dizzy with hate.

“Don’t let him doze off again, alright?”

“Where are you going?” Carl asks, brow drawn.

“Nowhere, bud. I’ll be right here if you need me.” He pulls the door shut at his back, and seems to be taking extra care not to slam it.

The moment he’s out of the room some tension, some sense of wires pulling taut, releases all at once. Rick realizes his hands have been tightening, tightening into fists, and his fingernails are biting into his palms—when he forces his fingers to uncurl, he finds his hands are shaking, trembling in furious bursts, spreading up his limbs.

Carl hovers beside the closed door, Judith asleep against his shoulder.

“Dad,” he says slowly. “Why are you and Shane fighting?”

“Why were you eavesdropping?”

“Hard not to when you’re yelling.”

Rick closes his eyes, lets his head tip back against the wall. The shaking has spread up to his chest. It’s like being submerged in freezing water and trying to keep from shivering.

“You can’t fall asleep again,” Carl says.

“I’m not sleeping. Why did you tell Shane about your mom?”

Carl falters. “I mean—she’s not here. I figured he’d be wondering.”

“There anything else you tell him?”

“I— No. Just that we got separated from the rest of the group, that’s all.”

“Anything about Judith?”

“Like what?” Carl asks—then, “You mean about her arm? No. Jesus, Dad, I’m not going around—”

“Did you tell him how old she is?”

“What’s going on?”

“Did you tell him how old she is?” It seems suddenly, crucially important to know.

“Why does it matter?”

Rick draws in as deep a breath as he can manage, grits his teeth and counts to twenty to keep from shouting. _One Mississippi, two Mississippi…_ Some of the shaking is subsides, slowly, by increments. After a while, sitting there in silence, it passes completely, leaving him weak and dizzy. When he opens his eyes at last he finds Carl still watching him.

“What’s going on?” Carl asks. “Aren’t you happy?”

For a moment Rick doesn’t understand the question. “About what?”

“About seeing Shane again.”

Rick looks away before Carl can read the answer in his expression. The empty gun still lies beside his boot, and he nudges it closer, picks it up to have something to occupy his hands. It’s empty, as he knew it would be—he didn’t doubt Shane had told him the truth about that, at least.

“Dad?”

Rick closes the chamber, gives it a spin out of habit. “You told him how old Judith is.”

“Well—yeah. He asked.”

 

**:::**

 

The space they occupy is three rooms in total—an adjoining room as plain and unfinished as this one, where Shane barricades himself, and a tiny bathroom, almost finished. A stack of fliers sit on the counter, a pretty blonde real estate agent with a frantic _sell-sell-sell!_ grin staring up from beneath the same slogan Rick had seen outside: _If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Right Now!_ The words give him a chill; he nudges the fliers aside to set down the lantern and looks into the mirror.

His reflection is startling in the shallow jumping light; face molted all along one side with bruises, a deep cut where the bullet grazed him. It’s going to scar. His shirt is crusted and stiff with blood, most of it not his own, but he doesn’t have a change of clothes; this is going to be his attire for a day or two. He tugs his stiff hem of his shirt up, carefully, and examines the bruise beneath. In the half-light it’s so dark it looks like a shadow, like part of the dark reached out and sank into his skin. Looking at it seems to make it hurt worse and after a second he lets his shirt fall and cover it up again, and stands there clutching the edge of the counter, waiting to get his breath back.

He’s starting to turn away with the glint of something in the mirror catches his eye. He looks back and his gaze settles on the band of his wedding ring. He never took it off—it never occurred to him to. It’s as much a part of him as the finger itself, as his whole hand. The lantern light shudders and shivers wildly, catches on the dull and scratched silver and makes it flash in a strange, staccato rhythm. When Rick closes his eyes, he can still see it, a series of glowing afterimages, signalling a dreadful warning.

 

**:::**

 

_“What was all that, anyway? Morse code?”_

 

**:::**

 

With the pale light of day straining in through the windows, Shane leans back into the room for a moment and speaks to Carl— _It’d be fine if you want to let him get some sleep now. Just wake him every couple of hours, check in a bit. You have a watch?_

But lying in that empty unfinished room, Rick finds he’s not at all tired. He hears pacing in the next room, scuffling footsteps downstairs, Judith making quiet, bored noises in the corner of the room and Carl’s attempts to shush her. Rick has his jacket stripped and folded under his head as a makeshift pillow, and lying flat on his back makes everything hurt a little less. The light filling the room slides over the dusty blades of a ceiling fan overhead, and Rick’s thoughts turn in strange directions as he stares up at it.

When he was a kid—six, maybe seven—his dad got a better job in a new town. The first night in the new house he’d lain there just like this, listening to the foreign sounds from the street, his mattress laid out on the floor because it was going to be another day or two until their furniture arrived. There was dusty ceiling fan overhead then, too, and it made such a monsterous noise when it was turned on that they’d left it off at night despite the stuffiness of the house. Rick remembers lying there staring at it, silent, saying nothing to his parents, but feeling like he was sinking, like it wasn’t just the new house that was empty, but something inside of him, too—like everything he had to look forward and everything he’d known had been taken out with an ice cream scoop. He already missed the town they’d left—trees around it, the dirt road, his few friends from school.

His mother must have guessed what he was feeling, despite his silence. She came over and pushed his hair back and kissed his head. “It’ll be different once we paint,” she promised.

She was right, it turned out. The day they painted the fumes were so bad Rick couldn’t stand being in the house, had taken himself on a walk out into the woods to be away from it. He’d stumbled upon a creek where a group of kids were playing, kids his age. One of them, the group’s obvious leader, was trying with little success to get the others enthused about taking apart the beaver dam they’d found.

“Why can’t we let them be?” someone had asked.

“Because.”

“Because _why_?”

“Because they block off the creek and then there’s no water down in the pond. No water means no fish. I was gonna show ya’ll how to fish this summer, remember?” He’d said it with a kind of parental authority, though at most he was only a few months older than the rest of the group. And the other kids, picking up on this, looked at each other, maybe considering dissent, maybe thinking it would be cool to go fishing but unsure of the effort to get to that point.

Rick chimed in, “I read beavers keep treasure in their dams,” although the truth was this was a fact he’d read about magpies, or even raccoons. There were, in his experience, few motivators greater than treasure.

This worked—it got them all united around the task of taking apart the beaver dam, and they did find an old waterlogged wristwatch in there – _the scratched gold surface glinting when it was turned to the sunlight_ – which was about as close to treasure as anyone could hope to find in that mess of twigs and mud. And by the end of the day the dam was gone, the living room was painted a cool shade of off white, and everything was different because Rick had a new friend—the group’s leader, whose name he’d learned was Shane Walsh, and who, even as they’d parted ways at sunset, was still listing off an itinerary of summer projects they meant to tackle. He’d said, “And we’ll build a firepit over here, and a fort over there—not a treehouse, those are for little kids; we’ll build it like a _military fort_ , I saw about them in this book—I’ll bring it and we’ll take a look at it tomorrow…” and every time he said ‘we’ it sounded less and less like he was talking about the rest of group and more like he was talking about the two of them. His enthusiasm was infectious and Rick went to sleep with the silent ceiling fan overhead and the sharp scent of paint in his nose and his mind full of plans…

He must have dozed off, somehow. He doesn’t remember waking every two hours, but when he opens his eyes the room is dark, and he’s lying on his side, and the pain seems distant, far off, his head static-filled and everything syrupy and unmoving. At first he’s not sure what woke him—and then he hears the door to the side room being eased shut, footsteps at his back, heavy and slow. One, two, drawing close, stopping near his head. He lies still, turned away, waiting.

There’s silence for so long he wonders if he imagined the sound, if he’s still half dreaming. And then he hears a light metallic _click_ , _click_. Softer than a metronome, off-rhythm. It goes on for a moment, a slow, considering sound, then stops abruptly. A moment’s silence follows in its wake. The footsteps move away again with long, decided steps. The door to the side room opens and draws closed again.

Rick is a while lying there in the dark before he realizes what what sound was: the deliberate, contemplative tap of a finger against the side of a pistol.

 

**:::**

 

He’s not sure how the next few days pass, except that they do.

There’s a red-tinged, moment-to-moment awfulness about it—a few points of pain any time he moves, Carl’s worried hovering, Judith’s crying setting off an agonizing headache, Shane pacing in the next room and returning only to snap a few sentences about the situation out on the street or who needs to be eating more, or, _Carl, seriously, man, you gotta give your dad some breathing room._

But there’s sunlight sliding across the carpet, across the sheetrock, slipping away to make room for shadow, and lantern light sets every motion jumping across the wall. Pain ebbing, swelling again. The sounds from the lower floors lessening until Rick wakes from an uneasy, restless sleep on the third day to silence, to a bruised pain that only flares when he moves too quickly or breathes too hard. He tests himself by pacing the length of the room in the pale light of early morning—a bit of weakness, he supposes, to be expected from resting for so long. He can push past the pain in his side and his shoulder and so long as he doesn’t need to bend or turn at certain angles. His head hurts and swims with a faint dizziness, like being a little drunk, but he’s pretty sure that’s going to last for a while and he can work around it.

He goes to the curtain, twitches it aside to look out. On the street below the bodies of walkers killed when they first arrived lie scattered like driftwood after a flood. Gore splattered across the road, some of the cars. Most of them neat headshots from a pistol or rifle. But a few of the closer ones are mangled, as if by the blast of a shotgun. One of those, not quite a headshot, drags itself with one arm and a head lolling on the meager remains of its neck. Other than that, the streets are quiet, still.

For the first time he considers what must have gone down here, the other half of the story he only overheard. Somehow Merle and Shane had wound up camped out here—at some point Merle looked out and saw something moving out in the streets below. Rick knows Merle made something of a habit of shooting at things off of roofs. He’d seen them, and whether he knew right away that they were people, or if he guessed they were walkers—he took aim, then kept firing for the sake of it, even when he did know. The gunfire and shouting must have brought Shane from the other room to investigate. He’d heard Judith’s crying and said, _What the hell are you doing, man? They’ve got a_ kid _out there—_

They’d argued. Merle left the roof at some point but the shooting continued. Shane taking aim at walkers. Had he known then, who was out on the street? Rick thinks he must have. He wants to believe Shane would’ve tried to help anyone stuck in a situation like that, but he knows, too, that it was hopeless, and Shane doesn’t like wasting ammo. He would have decided there was nothing he could do and let things play out. Unless he’d seen Carl. And guessed—what? That Lori must be there, too, and he’d get to play hero to both of them again, and when it was over Lori would be _so_ grateful to him—

In the end it doesn’t matter how it played out. Rick watches the streets for a while longer but nothing moves. He goes over to the filthy canvas bag that once belonged to Merle Dixon, tries to touch it as little as possible while rummaging through the contents. It’s about what he expected to find—terrible smell, dirt at the bottom of the bag, bottles of pharmaceuticals with the labels worn off. Rusted can-opener, two knives. A box of ammo for a rifle, and a loaded Glock G19 with the safety off. Rick puts the safety firmly back on and tucks it into his belt, next to the empty Python.

He wakes Carl and they make their way through a small, silent breakfast. If Carl is worried by the prospect of heading out, he doesn't say so, just nods and starts getting Judith ready, his expression turning blank in a way that’s become worryingly familiar.

They didn’t have much on them, and there’s not much to pack. It takes a minute or two. The only thing left, Rick supposes…

There’s silence from the adjoining room—a full, uneasy silence he’s reluctant to intrude upon. He taps his knuckles against the hollow door. Eases it open. Shane’s half-sitting against the window sill, one leg drawn up to his chest, cleaning out the shotgun that’s already spotless, and he doesn’t look up when Rick enters the room.

“Time to head out?”

Rick draws the door shut at his back. He’s not sure this is going to be a conversation he wants Carl to overhear. “It is.”

“You know you only got one shot at this, right? You sure you’re ready for it?”

“Ready as I’ll be for a while.”

“Because it ain’t just you at stake here—”

“You think I don’t know that?” Rick is amazed at how quickly his anger flares. Even having decided to disengage from all of this, he can’t seem to stop Shane from getting under his skin with a few words. He swallows hard, says more evenly, “You’ll cover us from the window?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Alright.” Rick hesitates. As always happens, he can’t seem to summon up the right words when he needs them most—everything gets lost somewhere on the murky path between neurons and synapses and language and sound. In the end he says, “Thank you. For what you did.”

Shane still doesn’t look at him. He finishes cleaning the shotgun and sets it aside, takes up a rifle instead from where it leans against the wall. He jerks his head towards the window. “Oughtta get going while the streets are quiet.”

In the other room, Carl, ready, stands with Judith held against his chest. She seems restless, looking around and squirming in his arms, making occasional anxious sounds, like she wants to do something, anything. Hopefully she’ll be quiet enough on the way out to the car—hopefully the gunshots, if any, won’t bother her too much.

Carl asks, “Where’s Shane?”

“He’s not coming with us.”

“What?”

“We’ll talk about it out at the car.” He doesn’t want to have this conversation here; he knows it won’t be quick, or easy, and knows, too, that any delay will give him time to second guess himself. The distance between here and the car already seems a daunting one; and is it right, after all, to part with Shane on this note? He can’t imagine he’ll be able to make peace with his own anger. Something about it is still wrong.

“Why isn’t he—”

“Let’s just focus right now. I’ll explain it to you once we get out of here.”

He reaches for the door handle, but Carl moves, plants himself in front of the door.

“Carl—”

“Tell me now.”

“This isn’t—”

“Tell me now or I’m not going.”

He draws himself up to his full height of four-foot-eight-inches and puts on a somber expression like a kid playing dress-up. It would be almost funny under any other circumstances. Rick keeps his voice even. “I need you to trust me right now. This isn’t the time for—”

“It’s never the time!” Carl says. Judith, agitated, grips the collar of his shirt between her small hands, tugging it all out of shape.

“Keep your voice down.”

“I’m not leaving! I can’t—” Carl’s breathing gives a little catch mid-word and the rest comes out in a thin rush, “I’m not going until I know why. I’m _not_. You always say—you’re always promising you’re going to tell me things later, or when I’m older, and then you never do—”

“Carl, this isn’t—”

“Why can’t you just tell me?” Judith’s questing hand has settled upon the chain of a necklace tucked beneath Carl’s shirt. She gives it a single, hard tug, and a pendant emerges flashing over the collar, so stark and unexpected that Rick takes a step away,  stricken with a brief, bad moment of vertigo at the sight. _22_.

Carl says in a rush, “I’d get it—I’m old enough. Why do you have to treat me like I’m Judith’s age? Why—”

“Where did you get that?”

The sound of his own voice startles him; rough and nearly tremulous with fury. Carl falls back a step, eyes wide.

“What?”

Rick points to the necklace. His hand shakes. “Did Shane give you that?”

“I—Yes.”

“Take it off.”

Carl stares at him, uncomprehending. Almost without realizing it, Rick takes another step towards him. Blood is rushing in his ears.

“Take it off. Now.”

“Dad—”

“This isn’t up for debate. We’re leaving. Forget about Shane, we need to go. You need to _listen_ to me—” Judith gives an unhappy little shout and tugs at the chain again and the pendant flashes again, migraine-bright— “And you take that damn thing _off_ —”

 

**:::**

 

 _He’d been about to doze off in the back of science class when it started._ A flash of silver light in the periphery of his vision, bright and sudden. Rick sat up and cast around the classroom for the source, for a wristwatch or bracelet that might be catching the light and reflecting it, but could find none.

The clock read five to three, and the room had a sort of restless end-of-day energy to it; a few students already beginning to quietly tuck away their books and notes, heedless of Mrs. Barber’s soporific lesson going on at the front of the room. She always seemed surprised by the time; when the bell rang she might try to call an assignment after them, but there was a good chance she’d forget it by the time the weekend was over. Rick had heard it theorized once or twice that Mrs. Barber was something of a pothead.

The flare of light came again, a maddening _flash-flash_ in his left eye, a moth of light circling him. It flickered out a pattern, long and short, repeating itself. Rick raised a hand against it and tried to return his attention to the half-hearted notes he’d started taking. The light seemed to die for a time; he lowered his hand and it returned, a blinding flare that caused him to flinch, and when he did Shane gave himself away with a low snort of laughter.

That semester they shared exactly one class together; they’d had to be separated early at the beginning of it to keep from passing notes the entire time. Shane cast a sidelong glance back from the front row of desks, self-satisfied and amused. He was tugging the chain of a necklace free from beneath the collar of his shirt. The pendant caught the spring afternoon light from the window and burned like silver-white fire between his fingers. _22_ , his number on the school’s football team. He lingered on the gesture, making it a kind of confession, then let it fall back beneath the collar of his shirt with a wink.

The bell rang a moment later and the room stood as one, a flurry of motion, chairs scraping back, papers being crumpled. Shane slung his backpack over his shoulder and stood waiting in the doorway; Rick joined him.

“Should’ve seen your face, man.”

“Well, I’m always happy to amuse.”

Shane said nothing, but leaned a little closer as the hallway narrowed around a corner, knocking their shoulders together; a rough, teasing half-apology that Rick accepted without thinking. The hallways were full of the chatter of conversation, a pitchy, choppy message over the intercom. A few posters with reminders for pep rallies and the upcoming prom had torn free of the corkboard and lay on the tiles. No one bothered picking them up or stepping around them.

“What was all that, anyway?” Rick asked, rubbing his eye. When he blinked he could still see the impression of light there, a dimming silver afterimage. “Morse code?”

Shane laughed at that, loud and easy. “Where do you get this stuff, man? Morse fuckin’ code.”

They happened to be passing an open classroom door at that moment, and an annoyed voice from within called out, “Walsh!”

“Sorry, Mr. Lannegan.”

“Don’t let me hear you talk like that again!”

Shane ducked his head, not looking particularly repentant as they reached their lockers. He always seemed to get a thrill of out skirting trouble, knowing he was mostly impervious to it. If a teacher told him to get out of class for making one off-color remark or another, he would raise his shoulders in a slow, who-can-figure-out-anything-in-this-crazy-world shrug, carefully collect his books and go—shooting one last sly look at the other students in a way that always set off a chain-reaction of titters. The next morning, the same teacher who had kicked him out of class would be tossing around football with him in the faculty parking lot, while the two chatted about the Bulldogs.

Rick shot another glance at the pendant while he worked through the automatic motions of the locker combination. “Where’d you get that, anyway?

“What?”

“That pendant.”

Shane’s hand went back to it, turning it between his fingers. “Early birthday present. Got home last night and my dad had it all laid on out on the table, right next to a twelve pack of Coors.”

His smile was almost painful to witness; Rick looked away, not saying he doubted it was an early birthday present so much as it was the product of Mr. Walsh forgetting his son’s actual birthday and making a rough approximation.

Shane leaned closer, lowering his voice. “That there’s your top-secret coded message, if you want one so bad: ‘Let’s get wasted.’”

Rick didn’t remember much Morse code from a childhood stint in Boy Scouts, but the message had been shorter than that, if it was any message at all. Either way, a twelve pack of cheap beer was still exciting then and he wasn’t about to turn down the invitation.

They wound up spending the afternoon at the lake, as was their habit in those days. Initially, Rick made an effort to draw Shane into some activity, proposing a few of their usual favorites—an expedition out into the woods, a drive into town proper for dinner, even a game of catch. But one by one these offers were shot down and deflected, and it seemed Shane was content to do nothing but lay there in the purpling shadows getting drunk and talking and worrying the chain of the necklace between his fingers like a rosary.

“When I have kids,” he said, voice heavy but only a little slurred, “I’m gonna spoil ‘em rotten. I’m talking trips to Disneyworld, ice cream for breakfast, new car when they turn eighteen. Everything the little shits ask for.”

The silver _22_ flashed in and out of the shadow and the sunlight. Rick watched it willingly now, transfixed as he adjusted to the strange, heavy warmth a few beers had put into his head.

“You’re planning to be rich, then,” he said.

“’Course I am. We’re both gonna be. We’re gonna live in one of them fancy communities with a pool in every yard and our kids’ll grow up together and they’ll be friends, too, don’t you think?”

“I think you’re drunk.” He thought they both were.

“We’ll do the whole thing. Barbeques, playdates. Hey, we could do a little matchmaker set up— watch ‘em grow up, get married. Then we’d have the same grandkids. They’ll like me better, of course. I’d be the _cool_ grandpa.”

“You might be the _only_ grandpa. I don’t think I’d want kids.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I don’t know. Never thought about it too much, I guess.”

“I want—four, at least.”

“And all four of these kids are getting a new car for their eighteenth?”

“Hell yeah. I’m thinkin’—three boys and a girl. Girl’s the youngest.”

“You got this all planned out.”

“You’re going to change your mind about kids when you see how cool my kids are going to be. And you can quote me on that.” He stretched out, gave a dramatic, loud yawn. “Man—Christmas’ll be the _best_. And their birthdays’ll be like national holidays. I’m talkin’ fireworks, water parks, everything. And every Friday’s gonna be pizza night. And one’ve ‘em is bound to inherit my—how should we say, _natural athletic prowess_ —”

Rick laughed.

“—and I’ll tell you what, man, you mark my words, I’m going to make it to every single one of that kid’s games. Rain or shine. Don’t care if I’m dyin’ in a hospital bed somewhere, that kid has a game, you bet your ass I’m gonna be there cheering him on.”

Rick raised his head from the grass. The sky was almost dark now, and he had no idea what to say. He had the sudden impulse to reach out, to make some sort of comforting contact—if he’d had one more beer, he might have.

“I’d be the cool grandpa,” Shane said again. He dropped the chain of the necklace, let it fall back against his chest where it lay pooling like liquid silver, like mercury, like poison.

Rick got to his feet, steadying himself against the trunk of a tree as he pulled on his shoes. “I think right now you’re the grandpa who needs to go to sleep it off.”

He held out a hand, and Shane grudgingly let himself be pulled to his feet, muttering, “Whatever, man—I’d be cool.”

“You’d be cool.”

Their houses were a block apart; Shane’s first. It crouched at the end of a long gravel drive cluttered with tires and trash and cigarette butts. They parted ways, and the moment they did Rick felt the weight of his condition more heavily than he had before, and it became an effort to walk in a straight line. His parents had made it clear that they knew he was going to be curious about alcohol, and that he could try it out as long as he was safe about it; he wasn’t sure they would have deemed this level of intoxication very safe, and was glad to remember that they were out for the night. The house was dark, and he made his way upstairs to his room without turning on the lights, leaning heavily against the walls for support, and fell across his bed as soon as he reached it.

The room seemed to spin strangely around him and when he tried to catch his breath, bracing himself and closing his eyes, he saw that strange pattern of light playing out behind his closed lids, a series of flashes. He thought he remembered the sequence of them; on impulse he dragged himself up and went to the closet, pulled out an old milk crate stuffed full of mementos. At the bottom of it was an old Boy Scout manual with a section on Morse code.

Even drunk, it didn’t take long to work out the message—it was short, one word. But when he’d figured it out, Rick sat looking at it in confusion, certain he must have got it wrong. He braced his head against the heel of his hand, laughing a little to himself at his own drunkenness, at the absurdity of the whole thing. He was, now that he thought of it, pretty sure Shane didn’t know Morse code, and even if he did, he wouldn’t have sent a message like that in a thousand years.

Rick shoved the book away and _closed the heavy cover with a—_

 

**:::**

 

Carl _slams_ the bathroom door shut at his back loud enough to rattle the doorframe.

Rick swears under his breath. He tries the handle and it won’t budge. From the other side of the door there comes a scraping sound, and the handle jars a little under his fingers as something is wedged hard against it. If there’s one thing Carl knows how to do, it’s barricade a door.

“Carl.” A sudden sensation of cold, sick weight settles into his stomach. He’s gone too far, said too much and too harshly. Another parental screw-up in a long line of screw-ups. His voice is his own again, and he struggles for the right words. What comes to him at last is a sort of moronic generality, but the only thing that feels safe, “I shouldn’t have said that. Would you please just—come out here and talk to me? I can’t have a conversation with you through the door.”

“I know. I’m not new at this.”

Rick tries the handle again with no real expectation of success. “Look—I’m sorry. But this is the way things have to be. I’ll try to explain things to you out in the car, but right now we have to—”

The door at the opposite side of the room draws open. “The hell’s going on?” Shane demands.

“Nothing,” Rick grits out. If there’s one thing the situation doesn’t need, it’s Shane’s presence. “I’m handling it.”

Shane takes in the scene, his gaze turning between Rick and the closed door. “Sure looks like it.”

“I’ve got it covered. Just give us a minute and we’ll be on our way.”

“Carl lock himself in there?”

There’s nothing for it. Rick tries to explain as briefly as he can, “He doesn’t want to go. I snapped at him. I’ve got it under control, I just need to talk to him and tell him the way it is—”

Shane isn’t listening anymore. He crosses the distance between them and pounds his fist against the door with a _bang!_ that probably has the interest of every walker in the building. There goes any shot they might’ve had at stealth—or a reasonable conversation, for that matter. Rick tosses his hands in the air and backs away, leaving him to it.

“Carl.” Shane slams his hand down again. “Not the time for screwing around right now. C’mon, man, open up.”

“No!”

“Wow,” Rick says. “Why didn’t I think to try that?”

Shane ignores him. “Okay, you got two options: Option one is you open up the door and come out here and we talk about this like men. Option two, I go get the crowbar and open up the door you’ll like the conversation we’ll have a hell of a lot less. Now which one’s it going to be, bud?”

Silence. Seems like Carl’s going for option two.

“Is that the way it’s gonna be, man?”

Rick lowers his voice. “You actually _have_ a crowbar?”

“No.”

“Why did you say—”

“ _He_ doesn’t know that.”

“I think he does. He’s calling your bluff.”

“Fine, I’ll go get the axe—”

“Who are you, Jack Torrance?”

A muscle in Shane’s jaw jumps. “You really let him push you around like this?”

“What?”

“I mean, kid throws a tantrum in the grocery store because he wants ice cream, you just buy him the ice cream?”

“ _First of all_ —”

Carl’s voice cuts across from the opposite side of the door. “I’m sorry.”

They both fall silent at once, exchanging a glance. This is progress.

Shane calls, “It’s alright, man, you just open up the door and we’ll call it even—”

“No—for whatever I did. I know it’s my fault you left. I don’t remember what I did, but—I’m sorry. I’d take it back if I could.”

Rick stands before the closed door in the sudden silence that follows. He can’t bring himself to speak or look at Shane. His shock coalesces into helpless anger, tightening in his chest. He turns away from the door and braces himself against the opposite wall and closes his eyes and slides down, letting out a slow breath through his mouth.

All the bluster’s gone out of Shane’s voice. “It wasn’t your fault, Carl.”

Carl, for his part, sounds like he’s fighting a losing battle with tears. “Yes it was! You were mad at me and you left. I know it’s my fault. I’m sorry for whatever I did and I promise I’ll make it up to you. Just—please come with us.”

“I—can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Rick opens his eyes in time to catch Shane looking quickly away from him.

“Because I can’t, alright? This ain’t debate club. Now open up—”

“Just tell me what I did wrong!”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Carl.”

“So why did you leave?”

“It’s—complicated.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Well, that there’s all the answer you’re getting, man, so you might as well make your peace with—”

“I’m not coming out!”

“You want to play it that way, alright. This door ain’t open on the count of three, I’m gettin’ the crowbar. One—”

Rick sighs. “Shane—”

“Two—”

Carl shouts, “I know you don’t even _have_ a crowbar!”

“You think I can’t get this door down one way or another?”

“Fine! So do it!”

“I will!”

Rick raises his voice. “Shane, knock it off.”

“I’m handling it!”

“Just—give him a minute, alright?”

He expects more protest, but Shane falls silent, turns sharply away. He seems to be looking for something to punch and Rick thinks with a flare of familiar annoyance that this is something he didn’t miss at all: Shane’s over-the-top masculine hyper-aggression, the way he’s constantly on the lookout for any opportunity to prove he’s the toughest guy in the room. Every aspect of his personality and demeanor sometimes seems strung together around that singular, desperate intent.

It’s tempting to push back against it by yelling louder, looking more imposing, taking even harsher measures. Instead Rick keeps his voice low and reasonable. “He can’t stay in there forever,” he says. “He’s got no food or water and he knows it. We sit tight for a while, and he’ll come out in his own time.”

“And when he does, what then?”

Rick doesn’t have an answer for that; doesn’t bother trying to come up with one. He tracks Shane’s pacing with his eyes, telling himself to leave it at that, to let it be, not to ask—

“When did you give him that necklace?”

The pacing stops. Shane flicks a guilty, caught-out look in his direction. “Few nights ago, while you were out. Made up some—some story about being brave, to go along with it. Just tryin’ to get him to calm down, is all.”

“Being brave. To do what, make some sort of touchdown play?” The ugliness in his own voice surprises him. Shane tenses at the words, almost a flinch—it’s satisfying to see him stung, and Rick presses, “Just your way of making sure he thinks about you every so often, that’s all that was.”

“You know what, man—”

“He’s _done_ thinking about you. We both are. So you tell him—whatever it takes to get him out of this room.”

“What’s that?”

“How the hell should I know? Tell him you hate him. Tell him you don’t want to see him anymore. He already thinks that’s what it is.”

“You kidding me with this?” Shane’s expression is rigid, fixed in an expression of contempt. “I saved your life. Far as I’m concerned, that’s the _last_ favor I’m doing for you. You want him out of here, you think of some other way, ‘cause what you just come up with—it ain’t happening.”

Rick hadn’t really gotten his hopes up—had been driven by a surprisingly cruel urge to even suggest it. Or maybe by the compulsion to push just enough to see if Shane still cared to push back. He’s not sure if he’s satisfied or stung by the results.

The sunlight is strengthening through the makeshift curtains of painters cloth—turning from the pale grey-blue to a tentative shade of autumn yellow. There’s still no sound from the empty streets—at least none Rick can hear—but there’s no telling how long it will stay that way.

Shane straightens his shoulders. “Alright,” he says, “I’ll make a run back to your car, get whatever you left there. Look around town a bit and scavenge some supplies. Then I’ll take off. You stay here another day or two, wait til you’re well enough to get out of here on your own…”

“Don’t bother with the supplies. We’ll go tomorrow.”

“Listen, man, I figured you had a decent shot with me covering you from the window, but without that you ain’t even going to make it up the _street_ in the shape you’re in. Nothing’ll happen in another day or two—”

“I’m not taking that chance.”

Shane exhales a short, annoyed breath through his nose. “If this was some dumbshit stunt you were pulling on your own, I’d say go right ahead. But something happens to you, where’s that leave Carl? You think of that?”

“Let me worry about how to keep my family safe—”

“Sure—seeing as you’re doin’ such a bang-up job of that so far.”

Rick is aware all at once of weight of the gun on his belt—imagines that same weight in his hand, imagines himself raising it and squeezing the trigger. It would be easy. He wouldn’t even feel bad about it. He can’t think of any good reason why he shouldn’t.

On the other side of the door, Judith gives a small, fussy little noise. A scrape, a shushing sound. Carl trying to comfort her. Rick’s thoughts flash to the necklace again, the pendant glinting between Carl’s fingers, and he pushes down that welling black hate and gets to his feet as well, gesturing to the door.

“You go. I’ll talk to Carl, make him understand. He won’t be happy, but he’ll get past it once he sees there’s nothing he can do.”

“We just talked about this, man, I ain’t letting you go off running around half dead, getting him killed too—”

“It’s not a question of you _letting_ me do anything, is it?”

This time he really thinks Shane really is going to punch something—maybe him. Part of him’s hoping for that, for an excuse. They stand looking at each other across the meager distance between them, neither willing to blink first. Stalemate.

“I’ll go with you,” Shane says. His tone, even and reasonable, almost as surprising as the words themselves. For a moment Rick doesn’t understand. Shane drops his gaze, and speaks quickly, getting the words out. “For a few days. Find someplace safer than this. Or we find the rest’ve your group and they can handle things from there—whichever comes first.”

Rick balks at the idea. He doesn’t want that. Can’t think of anything he wants less. He’s about to say as much when Shane holds up a hand, stems the words with a torrent of his own,

“You shot everything else down, and your plan ain’t workin’ for me. This here’s the middle ground, alright? Just a day or two, ‘til I know everything’s good. In the meantime I’ll—I’ll try’n figure out what to say to Carl.”

Rick shakes his head but says nothing—afraid of what he’ll say if he tries. Shane raises a hand and takes half a step towards him and Rick takes a corresponding step back, automatically, skin crawling at the thought of proximity, at the thought of Shane laying a hand on his shoulder—an old, familiar gesture between them, something he’d never thought about much before, can’t bear to think about now. Shane lets his hand fall back to his side.

“I don’t like it any better than you do,” he begins.

“Don’t you?”

“You think I want to sign myself up for another minute of you lookin’ at me like _that_?”

There’s another small noise on the other side of the door, and both glance towards it. Rick lowers his voice.

“You just do what I said in the first place and take off now—”

“Christ—we been over this! We’re just talking ourselves in circles, and we’re not doing that, I ain’t leaving you here—”

“You can’t just hide behind whatever kind of promise you made to Carl—”

“—I ain’t doing that again. Alright? Forget it.”

A silence falls between them—the sort of shocked, sudden silence that follows the bang of a cherry bomb. Rick realizes he’s shrank back, almost against the wall again—recoiling without meaning to from all of it. He swallows hard, and looks away—unable, all of a sudden, to meet Shane’s eyes.

“A few days,” he says, after a long while.

Shane nods, starts to turn towards the door, to speak through it—Rick holds up a hand.

“A few days. We get where we’re going, make it fast, and then you’re gone. I don’t care if you come up with something to say to Carl by then. Tell you the truth, I’d rather you didn’t say anything to him at all. He could stand you leaving once, he can do it again. You don’t stick around more than you need trying to make yourself feel better. Do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“If I tell you to leave—”

“We get you somewhere you’re not gonna get them killed and you won’t have to tell me a damn thing. I ain’t too keen on your company either, you hadn’t noticed.” He turns the door, posed to knock, and quirks an eyebrow. “Alright?”

Rick braces himself—his stomach churning as if he’s about to leap from a high diving board.  He’s about to nod when he changes his mind at the last second, holds out a hand instead. For a moment Shane looks at him, uncomprehending, then seems on the brink of laughter—in the end he meets the handshake without comment or protest. His hand is calloused, warm, and Rick notices because it might just be the first time they’ve ever shaken hands—the gesture would have been out-of-place in their relationship before, overly formal and strange.

“Alright.”

 

**:::**

 

In the short distance out of the building and across town, he has time to regret his decision, accept it, then settle on regretting it again, berating himself, wondering how he could have been so stupid. It’s the look on Carl’s face that does it—guilty, braced for reprimand, but hopeful. Or it’s the body they have to pass on the second floor, the mess of what used to be Merle Dixon torn apart on the floor. It’s the bracing chill of the air as they step outside, a reminder that this is real—or Shane kicking in the head of a walker that wasn’t finished off with a shotgun blast, the enthusiasm with which he does it, the cold, savage light on his face as its skull comes apart under his boot.

But now it’s too late for regretting, too late for taking anything back.

They reach the truck, and Rick is immediately aware of how it must look through Shane’s eyes. It belongs to a breed of what they once both deemed ‘overcompensator trucks’—an enormous, lifted Ford F-450 that looks ready to tailgate other drivers and take up four parking spaces. Rick feels the need to justify it.

“It’s not too bad on gas mileage.”

Shane pretends not to have heard, pacing a slow circle around the truck, making a show of focused vigilance while Carl gets Judith strapped into the carseat.

“Does pretty well going up hills,” Rick goes on, unable to stop himself. “And this traction control system that’s real handy if—”

Shane still doesn’t look at him, just holds out a hand. “Key.”

“For what?”

“What do people usually use car keys for?”

“I’m driving.”

Shane actually laughs—harsh, mocking laughter. “With that concussion of yours? That’s a good one.”

“I can drive just fine. Don’t worry about it.

Shane looks at him now, smiling unpleasantly, like there’s a joke here and he’s holding back on the punchline. He gives an amiable shrug, goes over to the passenger side door and tugs it open. “Have it your way.”

About two miles out of town Rick stops the car in the middle of the road and braces his head against the wheel, a withering sensation of motion sickness rolling through him. When he shuts his eyes he sees the lurid, flashing firework show—the prelude to a migraine.

“You drive,” he says, and to his credit Shane doesn’t gloat, just gets out of the car and circles around while Rick slides into the passenger seat.

 

**:::**

 

They drive on in silence save for the hum of the engine—the kind of silence that settles uncomfortably, wanting to be spoken against. Carl notices it, too. Shifting around in the back seat with Judith, occasionally fidgeting with the chain of the necklace he never removed, his gaze skips from the passing landscape to the tense scene front seat. He still seems to be waiting for someone to yell at him for his stunt with the door, and when it becomes apparent that no one’s going to, he seems all the more worried by the silence. After a long while he says, “I wish we had some music.”

Rick glances over—Shane remains focused on the road, as though he hasn’t heard, but Rick knows they’re thinking of the same thing: of their lives before, and their eternal battles over the radio. Shane’s obsession with any Jimmy Page-inspired guitar work was well-documented by the time they finished high school; Rick, on the other hand, would have preferred to switch over to the station back home that played little besides Johnny Cash or Marty Robbins, which Shane could only stand for at most fifteen minutes before his mood took a sharp turn towards the unbearable. Some days they could compromise on Creedence Clearwater Revival, but most of the time it was a race to get to the radio first, and then a battle of wills to stay in the car, as leaving it unattended for any length of time would result in a change of station upon return. Once, Rick had stepped out only momentarily, to check on a flurry of motion near the back tires which turned out to be a plastic bag—and, upon returning not fifteen seconds later, found Jerry Lee Lewis’s mournful implorements for his sweetheart to remember him replaced with a heavy Black Sabbath drum beat and the singer declaring there were icicles in his brain. Rick sighed, annoyed, but Shane only shrugged and said, “You left, man.”

Rick might say some of this now—might say anything, to break the silence. Or he might just reach for the glovebox, where he’s pretty sure he saw an old Righteous Brothers eight-track the other day, and put it on just to have something. But he doesn’t, and the only sound in the car is the hum and churr of the engine, and the occasional sound of fussing from Judith.

 

**:::**

 

To have something to do, Rick digs out a box of ammo from the glovebox for the Python, loading it as a matter of habit. But as he does he senses something—nothing he can put his finger on. Something different. He spends a few miles in a state of apprehension before asking Shane to pull over. He steps out on the side of the road, points the gun into the trees, and pulls the trigger. It gives a small, dry click and doesn’t fire. He tries again, already with a sinking feeling. Nothing. Again. Nothing.

“Is it broken?” Carl calls from the backseat.

Rick tries a few more times, with similar results. He drops the gun to his side. “It is.”

The revelation is staggering; he might as well have lost a limb. He’s had the gun for as long as he can remember, and it’s the only thing that feels right in his hand. The pilfered Glock from Merle Dixon’s bag is an angled, ungainly thing by compare. He stares at the gun in his hand for a while long, the long sleek barrel, the well-worn handle. He might still be able to fix it. The problem might resolve itself. Somehow he knows it won’t. He doesn’t know as much as he ought to about repairing antique guns; the Python’s never broken before, never failed him even once.

He returns it to its holster, climbs back into the car. For a while he thinks he senses Shane’s about to say something— _Tough luck, man,_ or _Want to give it a proper burial?_ but the silence goes on, and he never does. They drive on in silence.

 

**:::**

 

The jostle of the car is grating, has Rick gritting his teeth against the pain in his side. Neglect has worn down the roads here, left them cracked and potholed, and Shane makes no extra effort to avoid them or drive smoothly. Rick supposes that’s fair—supposes he couldn’t have hoped for any better. By sunset the chill of the day has turned to drizzling rain, and he’s miserable—but in a way he welcomes the misery. It keeps him from settling back into the comfortable space of an old friendship that isn’t there anymore. He spends that night trying to lay as flat as he can in the backseat of the truck, listening to the silence of the road, a whoosh of wind, a burst of rain against the windows. The pain in his side and in his head keeps him from sleep—or maybe it’s not the pain so much as having Shane on watch. It’s different, being in the car, than it was in the old real estate building. The truck which has been Rick’s space with Carl and Judith—was his space with Lori for a short month.

He remembers sleepless nights lying beside her in the covered bed of the truck, blankets thrown off against the heat of an early summer. Lori shifting restlessly beside him. They’d salvaged an old mattress from one of the houses they passed, but it wasn’t comfortable. Lori was trying not to be an inconvenience but Rick could sense her discomfort, her frustration.

He brushed away the curtain of her hair and rubbed a hand between her shoulders. She sighed when he found a tight knot of muscle and pressed against it, making slow circles with his thumbs.

“I’m keeping you awake,” she said.

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.” But she leaned a little more firmly into the massage, and after a while seemed to relax. Rick let his hands fall away; he was beginning to think she’d drifted off at last when she drew in a sharp, tight breath. “Great. _Now_ your kid’s doing a tapdance on my kidneys.”

“Be nice to have another artist in the family,” Rick said, and Lori gave a quiet laugh in response. But the space between them seemed suddenly staler, and after a moment Rick turned away from her, looking out the small window to the clear starlit night beyond, pinpricks of light in the distance. He saw a streak of what he thought might have been a shooting star, and said nothing; Lori was shifting around again at his back, and he felt the charge of her getting ready to say something else, and hoped she wouldn’t.

“You know that no matter what, it’s yours.”

“I know.” He knew, and wished he could believe it; it was easier some days than others. He wondered if it was too late for wishing on that star after all. Probably.

The blankets shifted. He felt Lori’s breath against his neck, smelled the sweat and scavenged soap on her scalp. Her fingers settled upon his shoulder and he closed his eyes, bracing himself against it, and her fingers tightened, _shook—_

He wakes with a jolt to the brightness of the morning, a hand upon his shoulder. In the shock of it he sits up so abruptly that his ribs and head alike spike with pain. His hand goes automatically to his gun. Shane recoils.

“Jesus—Take it easy.” He holds up both hands, a startled, placating gesture from where he’s twisted around in the front seat.

The cab of the truck is empty except for the two of them; Rick hears Judith’s quiet fussing just outside, Carl talking to her in a low voice. His breath goes shaking out of him, and he drops his head to brace against the back of the seat, heart pounding.

“Way to scare the hell out of me, man,” Shane says. “You wouldn’t wake up. Thought you might’ve died in your sleep.”

Rick doesn’t look up. It’s as if the sleet of the night before has slipped through his skin, into his blood, and made him colder. He’s grateful for that, wants to lean into it, a coldness inside, a perfect, icy stillness—a chill to numb everything he doesn’t want to feel, flash-freeze everything he doesn’t want to remember. When he speaks his voice sounds almost too cool and strange to be his own.

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

 

**:::**

 

The second day on the road is more of the same, and the next—more silence, more painful jostling down highways and backroads. If it were any other time, Rick might say something. _I hate the way you drive,_ he might say. And Shane might give him a sideways look and say, _You ever heard that old saying about beggars being choosers?_ and Rick would reply _No, how’s that one go?_

He doesn’t say any of it. The third day turns into a fourth.

 

**:::**

 

On the fifth day there’s a church a little ways off the road, a simple white clapboard construction with a high steeple. Not the most promising place to find supplies, but the roads are barren, and they need to stretch their legs anyway. Carl and Judith wait in the truck and Rick trails along after Shane, stepping carefully, the unfamiliar weight of the Glock in his hand.

The doors to the church are unsecured. Nothing inside but dust, some trash, a single line of graffiti in yellow spray paint so neat it looks like printing: _We are the Hand which wields the sword._

A gust of wind cuts through the rafters overhead, and they creak mightily. Rick looks up and finds himself regarding a pair of polished black shoes. A man in a simple black suit hanging by the neck, a single gunshot through the center of his forehead. Another body beside him, and another. Rick counts eleven, all in their Sunday best, dried and dusty between wan slats of light. Next to him, Shane follows his gaze up and swears and runs a hand through his hair.

“Let’s go,” Rick says.

“Might be something around here. Couple of houses a ways off. Might find something we can use there.”

“Let’s go.”

 

**:::**

 

They haven’t found anywhere safe to part ways, any sign of their group. And as the minutes, hours, and days slip by, Rick feels as though he’s walking further and further out on the ice over a frozen lake—as though at any moment he might hear it crack beneath his feet and be plunged into water far above his head.

 

**:::**

 

He can’t sleep. He doesn’t know how a week has managed to pass—a week, and the days so full of nothing at all. He lies stretched out in the uncomfortable back seat, listening to Carl’s quiet breathing in the front seat. Judith can’t seem to sleep, either; in the dark she’s restless, looking around, bored. Rick sits up, moving carefully around the pain in his side, and tries to catch her attention, to find some way to entertain her so she doesn’t wake Carl. She doesn’t want to be entertained; or maybe she doesn’t want to be entertained by _him_. She squirms unhappily away and lets out a little shriek. He tries to shush her, to say something reassuring, and she begins crying in earnest. After a few minutes of futile struggle, Carl sits up, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“I think she needs some fresh air.”

“I’ll take her.”

“I got it. It’s fine.”

Carl gathers her up and gets out of the truck without allowing for further discussion. With the door closed, Judith’s crying is muffled. Rick sighs, hangs his head. He’s gotten along with Judith exactly once; a night he’d rather not remember. Part of him is sure they’ll never be on good terms with each other, no matter what he does. If he lives long enough to see her grow up to Carl’s age, older, he knows he’ll find himself faced with a foreign, dark-eyed girl always in the process of slipping away from him, as far away as possible—and he won’t blame her for it.

The road they’ve parked along is quiet, well off the highway. Carl knows to stay alert, but Rick has already thought of several dozen ways this moment alone could go bad, if something comes stumbling out of the woods. He glances up at the rearview mirror, just keeping an eye on things.

It’s impossible to make out much more than shapes in the dark—but he sees Shane’s silhouette, leaning against the back of the truck, turning as Carl approaches. They say something to each other, too muffled and low to hear, and Carl yawns. Shane straightens up, holds out a hand in his direction—and without hesitation Carl moves Judith away from his shoulder, holds her out, and Shane takes her instead.

The ice cracks.

Rick moves too fast getting out of the truck, ignoring the stab of protesting pain from his side. The night air is cold and bracing after the stuffy heat of the truck cab, and Carl gives a start at the sound of the door closing, relaxes when he looks up and sees Rick.

“Sorry she woke you,” he says.

“Don’t apologize,” Rick says, which Lori would have managed to make sound soft and reassuring, but, in his voice, comes out sounding like he’s annoyed, and Carl’s face falls. Rick tries again, “It’s alright. I was awake. You should try to get back to sleep.”

His gaze fixes on Shane, who hasn’t moved, hasn’t reacted to his presence. Judith, unused to him, seems to be quieting down mostly out of curiosity, at the novel experience of being held by someone new.

There’s something awful about seeing them together; a curl of Judith’s hair on her forehead seems more pronounced than usual, and mirrors Shane’s. Rick tells himself he’s imagining the resemblance.

Carl lingers a moment more, seeming uncertain—then another yawn catches him unawares, and he nods and slips off back to the cab of the truck to lie down. Rick wants to say something the moment the door’s closed at his back, but all the words crowd up his throat all at once, a furious jumble, and he winds up standing there in silence instead.

Judith’s doing better being held by Shane than she’s ever tolerated Rick’s presence. Babies must be able to sense these things. She reaches out with one small hand, grabbing at air. Shane smiles a little sadly at her efforts, peers back into her small face.

“She’s sure got Lori’s eyes, don’t she?”

Rick wants to say, _She’s got your eyes._ He wants to throw a punch. Palm resting on the gun at his belt, he wants to do something worse. He gives a short, jerky nod and says nothing and does nothing.

“What’s that on her arm?” Shane asks. The sleeve of Judith’s shirt riding up, and the scar stands out ugly and dark on her soft skin.

“Birthmark,” Rick finds himself saying. He’s not sure where that came from, but he says it without hesitation, and Shane nods, seems to believe it. Rick clears his throat. “Your shift’s about to end. You should get some sleep.”

“I’m fine for now.”

“I’m up anyway. Get some sleep. I’ll take her.”

Shane looks up from Judith at last, his expression unreadable. He complies without a word. The moment Rick takes Judith she gives a small shriek of protest, but quiets down quick enough. Shane takes a full step back, not looking at either of them at all, and brushes a hand through his hair, leaves it standing up at the back. He goes and slides into the driver’s seat and sits there for a long moment with the door open, elbows braced over his knees and fingers pressed tight against his mouth. He stays that way for a long while, a vicious thing on a fraying leash, before he at last seems to shake himself and closes the door.

Rick eases his hand off the hilt of his gun.

 

**:::**

 

The following afternoon they have the good luck of passing across one of the signs they left on the road, the spray paint running, but the outline of it still clear: **★3↑**. Shane stops the car and they get out and look around. The area looks familiar, and Rick sighs.

“We’ll have to turn around. There’s nothing that way. Wildfire tore through, it’s all just dead trees, few of them across the road. No getting through.”

Shane walks a few paces up the highway, looking at the yellowing trees lining the road. “You got a map?”

“Not of this area. The state map we had was back in Dale’s RV…” He trails off. Some names he tries not to say anymore, not because he wants to forget, but because the memory stings. _Dale_ and the  _RV_ , especially in conjunction, calls to mind the last night they’d all spent at the farm, the metal odor of blood on the air, the dark, the screams—It’s a memory he can’t recall without reliving it, and he leans back against the side of the truck to brace himself, trying force his mind back to the present, the chill air and firm tarmac under his feet.

Shane doesn’t notice, continues his pacing and scanning and frowning. “How the hell have you made it this far without a map?”

“We have a few county maps. Jasper. Monroe. Spalding. Other than that we look for landmarks.”

Shane scoffs—he’s been doing that lot, a half head shake and an eye roll to go along with it, like every single thing Rick says is the new stupidest thing he’s ever heard. It would be annoying if they weren’t already so far past annoyance. He retrieves his bag from the cab and after a moment’s rummaging produces a well-worn map and lays it out flat on the truck bed. Rick goes to join him, and they look over it together—a tangle of the dark lines of rivers, red highways, dots and symbols, the paper worn thin at the joints where it folds. _Senoia_ is circled in fading red sharpie. At the sight of it, Rick’s stomach does another of those plunges. He hazards a glance over at Shane.

“You and Merle—did you ever find your way back to the farm?”

“What’d you think we were doing all the way out here?”

He doesn’t look up, and Rick wavers, wondering if Shane might have guessed what happened. If the scratches on the inside of the barn doors are still there. If he might have pieced together a narrative, might know without knowing about the horror of that night. If anyone could guess a thing as awful as that.

“This is where I was camped out with Merle,” Shane says, and Rick shakes himself, looks where he’s pointing. A little town in Henry County. “Since then we stayed on the highway and yesterday when the sun was setting it was right in our eyes—so…” He traces a finger down, across the line of a highway, and his hand stills. “Coweta County. You think the rest of your group might’ve come this far?”

Rick bats away a late season mosquito. “If they followed the signs we left, sure. But the signs point east after this, back towards where we met up with you.”

“Or maybe they didn’t come across any of those signs, or they didn’t figure it was you if they did. We got no way of knowing.” He adds, “I can tell you free-handed the star.”

Rick gives him a look, but Shane’s already back to examining the map, brow drawn. “The other group I was with was in Meriwether County. I’d say we might head that way, but to tell you the truth, I don’t know how well you’d fit in there. Pretty tough bunch of guys.”

Ignoring the jab, Rick says, “You think _you’d_ want to go back there, anyway?”

“Dunno. Not too sure where I’m going after this.”

His fingers drum on the map as he looks it over, brow drawn. Rick considers the idea of Shane being out here alone. He’d like to be able to say he doesn’t care, that it won’t matter to him one way or another—he has hated Shane for so long that he’s unprepared for any other emotion. For a faint notion of apprehension. For concern. He hadn’t imagined he could feel anything like that for Shane ever again.

“I’d feel a whole lot better knowing you had someone to watch your back out here,” he says, before he can tell himself it’s a bad idea, bound only to earn him a look—exactly like the one Shane’s giving him now, like he thinks Rick has lost his mind.

“Would you, now?”

The truck cab door opens and Carl leans out. “Are we staying here for the night?”

“No,” Rick answers, because there’s nothing on the road, nowhere secure to take shelter, but at the same time Shane calls back, “Maybe—hang tight for a minute, alright, bud?”

Carl props chin in his hands, elbows resting on his knees.

Rick lowers his voice, speaking to Shane, “Listen: when he asks something, I’d like it if you could let me do the answering—”

Shane ignores him, talking about the map again. “So south’s not an option, west’s not an option. That leaves us going back the way we came or heading north. Now, I figure north’s a pretty good bet—ain’t been that way much, might be somewhere safe you could hold out for a while—but if you reckon your group would’ve figured out them signs you left, the thing to do would be double back—even though I can tell you right now there ain’t nowhere around there that’d be a good place to stick out the winter. Your call.”

“We’ll double back. Head east.”

Shane nods, rolls up the map. He taps it on the hood of the truck, evening out the edges, and casts a look around as he shoves it back into his bag. “Alright. East it is, first thing in the morning. We oughtta figure out something for now, though, before the sun sets. You feeling up for a quick sweep, see if there’s someplace around here to camp out for the night?”

Glancing around at the yellowing light, the softening shadows, Rick has to admit it’s a good plan. He calls to Carl, “You alright here for a minute?”

“I’m fine.”

“If it’s an emergency—”

“Lean on the horn. But only if it’s a real emergency. Doors locked, keep checking all the mirrors, get down fast if I see anything. I know.”

He does know—knows it like instinct, like a kid his age should know to look both ways before crossing the street. Rick nods—checks and double checks his gun is loaded, a box of ammo in his pocket, and when he finishes Shane is already waiting at the edge of the road, duffle bag slung over his shoulder and tapping a finger impatiently along the barrel of his shotgun. Rick casts one final look back at the truck, at Carl locking the doors and settling Judith’s car seat into the front seat beside him, and follows.

 

**:::**

 

They run into two walkers in the first minute—Rick, standing back and feeling useless as he watches Shane deal with them, is ready to suggest this alone means the area’s no good for camping out, but after that it’s quiet. A little ways into the forest he breathes more deeply—not relaxing, exactly, but relieved to be away from the cramped quarters of the truck and the eternal black stretch of the highway.

He puts the time of year somewhere in late October or early November—keeping track of the days hasn’t been his top priority, but he knows it’s been around six months since Judith was born. A northern wind cuts through the yellowing trees and stings his face. They pass a stagnant, swampy smelling pond, the surface flat with dirt and bits of pine needles, and cross the trickling, muddy creek that drains into it. A dragonfly hovers over the filthy water, zigzagging downstream in short, jerky bursts.

They stop for a moment after crossing the creek, while Shane digs an old cloth from his bag to clean his pocket knife of the gore left from the walkers. Rick watches him do it, amused in spite of himself. He can’t remember a time where he didn’t associate Shane with that beat-up old sheriff’s bag, duct-taped now on the bottom where continued use has worn a dinner plate-sized hole. It wouldn’t need the duct tape Shane wasn’t always carrying around so much useless junk—Rick once watched with his own two eyes as Shane reached into that bag and produced not one, but _two_ trailer hitches, which he claimed to have been carrying around for months, “Just in case.” _In case you need_ two _trailer hitches?_ Rick had asked, incredulous—for the first time in well over a year, they needed  _one_ —and Shane gave him a good-natured shove and laughed, _Screw you, man, I just saved your ass—_

Before he can stop himself, he asks, “You got any notion at all what you’re carrying around there?”

Shane looks back at him, a flicker of confusion crossing his features before he realizes what Rick’s referring to. He shoulders the bag a little more firmly.

“Sure do. All stuff I need.”

“Got any Werther’s Originals floating around?”

“How about you leave my bag alone? Least I had a damn map.”

“Of course you had a map—Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve got Jimmy Hoffa in there.”

Shane gives a short, surprised laugh, and turns—their eyes meet and his smile becomes fixed. The moment is off-kilter; all the right words and cues are there, but it’s all wrong, a macabre imitation of the way things were before; something that used to be there and is gone forever now, killed while its back was turned, and they’re trying to string up its corpse on puppet strings and get it to act its part.

Rick is about to suggest they head back—to say there’s nothing here worth seeing—when they reach a clearing of trees, a dirt road atop a small hill. Through the thinned trees they’re greeted by a surprising sight. A dark stone building, circled round with layer of tall, barbed wire wrapped chain-link fences. A prison. It’s surrounded by walkers, little more than dark shapes at this distance, swarming through the grass like smoked-out bees from a hive.

“Well, there’s something,” Shane says. He steps forward, bracing a hand on the trunk of one tree as he peers down the incline. “Sign over there says West Georgia Correctional Facility. Huh. You ever think of that?”

“No,” Rick says—taking in the fences, the long flat yard beyond it. The perfect place for a garden, if someone could just…

“Bet these places fell quick. Wouldn’t that just be a bitch? Spend the end of the world locked up in a cell wearin’ bright orange. Not to say it wasn’t—” He turns, breaks off mid-sentence as he looks at Rick’s face. Then he looks back at the prison.

“If we section it off,” Rick says, “close that gate in the back, break it up and deal with one piece at a time…”

“We’d run out of ammo before we even got to the gate,” Shane says. “We’d have to move fast and it’d be a hard fight. You’re better than you were a few days ago, but you ain’t up for it. And even if you were, we still couldn’t pull it off between the two of us.”

Rick tries to come up with an argument to that—there isn’t one. He chews the inside of his cheek, trying to think of a smarter way about it. They’d need at least one layer of fences at their backs. Maybe they could deal with the rest of the walkers through the fence, but Shane’s right—they don’t have enough ammo, and if the noise draws everything from inside, the fences won’t hold up to that kind of weight. They’d wind up trapped between two layers of walkers with no way out. They’d have to get to the gate, and there’s no chance of him moving fast enough for that in his current state. Shane could, but he’d be without backup of any kind, and if anything at all went wrong…

Rick shakes off the idea. “You’re right.”

“When am I ever wrong?” He doesn’t wait for a response, doesn’t spend any more time regarding the prison, just turns and heads back into the woods, walking fast, like he’s late for an appointment. “Nothing around here. We oughtta be getting back to the car.”

And Rick, after a long moment, follows.

 

**:::**

 

It’s a silent trek back through the woods to the highway—Rick wondering the whole time if there’s something he ought to say while they have a moment alone, if there’s anything he can say. But the moment they break free of the treeline, all thought of things he might say are wiped from his mind—sitting on the road are a pair of unfamiliar vehicles: a car, an SUV. In a split second Rick’s prepared himself for the worst-case scenario—another group travelling along the same route, and he should never have left Carl and Judith alone, never, and something’s gone as wrong as it can possibly go and he has no one to blame but himself—

But even as needles of panic prickle his chest and his mind whirls over courses of action, his gaze falls on the familiar-looking motorcycle just to the side of those new vehicles. He puts out an arm to stop Shane from rushing forward. Listens. He can hear voices. Familiar voices.

Ignoring of the pain in his side, he breaks into a sprint, makes his way up the incline to the highway. His heart gives a startling, sweet slam—Carl’s standing there, Judith against his shoulder, talking to Daryl. Glenn. Maggie. Hershel. T-Dog. Beth. They’re all smiling, expressions broken-open and relieved, and as Rick rushes onto the road their gazes turn as one towards him.

“Son of a bitch,” T-Dog says—glancing at Carl, he touches a hand to his mouth, adds, “Sorry.”

Rick starts forward—Maggie reaches him first, throws her arms around his neck. He’s a little surprised, a little taken aback—didn’t think they were at that level with each other. But then everyone’s pressed around him, sudden, crowding in—a few people laughing—a few exclamations of joy, of relief. It feels like a miracle, like he’s never been so lucky, or so happy—every bit as good as stepping out of that van at the camp outside of Atlanta and finding Carl and Lori there waiting for him. A sudden, almost unbearable happiness swells in his chest until it nearly hurts, and then it _does_ hurt; he recoils from the embrace with a hiss of pain, touching a hand to his ribs.

Glenn releases him. “Ooh, sorry—”

“The hell happened to you?” Daryl asks.

“Someone got the drop on me.” Rick isn’t not sure why he says it that way, exactly—and even as he raises his eyes, meaning to clarify, to say there’s something else they need to talk about, Carl cuts across, “Look who else is here!” and as one they turn again, looking up the highway, and the day catches in place.

Shane hadn’t quickened his pace or rushed to reach the highway. He stands at its edge, over the white line, eying them as a disobedient child might regard his parents.

“Holy _shit_.”

This time T-Dog doesn’t bother apologizing.

 

:::

 

That night they camp out on the side of the road, building up a pile of stones around a small fire to warm up a few cans of food and catch up in a rush.

The herd, as Rick suspected, never reached the barricade on the highway, too interested in trailing along after their truck. Back at the barricade, the rest of the group waited around as long as they could; and when sunset came and went and Rick didn’t return, Daryl went to check out the town. Saw the footprints, the trampled earth everywhere. They fixed up a couple of cars  from the barricade that weren’t in too bad of shape, got them running. Followed the tracks as far as they could go, which wasn’t far. Most of the walkers seemed to lose interest in their pursuit about five miles away, but there were enough to force them to double back and circle around twice, taking up the better part of a day in the process, and by the time they were back heading in the same direction they figured Rick must have gone, the trail had gone cold and they were reduced to guessing, hoping they were still on the right route.

From there the roads were difficult in all the ways they’d come to expect. Roadblocks, walkers, half-complete maps. They were almost ready to give up by the time they stumbled across a bit of graffiti on the road. It was Beth who figured it out. “It was just such a weird star, figured it had to mean something,” she says, and Rick winces.

As for his part of the story, he tells it as quickly as possible, glossing over most of it. The mark on Judith’s arm he doesn’t mention at all. Or Merle. Both details, he tells himself, it isn’t the time for sharing. He needs to figure out what to say about Judith, and he needs to get Daryl alone, somewhere they can have a minute to breathe, before he mentions Merle.

He keeps it brief when he comes to the part about Shane. He says it was just one of those impossible coincidences. That Shane showed up at just the right moment, saved his life, and they’ve been travelling together since. He doesn’t say, _And now that’s over._ Shane sits silently across the fire from him, for once saying nothing—letting Rick choose his words, letting him decide how the story gets told.

“Crazy couple of weeks,” Glenn says when he’s finished, summing it it rather neatly. He keeps darting glances at Shane—they all do—unsure how to respond to his presence, unused to anyone who isn’t part of their group. It’s like having a stranger in their midst—really is like that, Rick supposes, for everyone but him and Carl. No one else knows Shane too well. Traveled with him for a month or two, that’s all. Hershel and Maggie and Beth have known him for even less than that.

They make their way through a meager meal. The conversation begins to slow and fizzle out once their stories have been told—the mood dampened by Shane’s unnatural, simmering silence in their midst. By his fake, forced smile and one word answers and distracted nods. Even when Carl tries to draw him in with a series of questions, he deflects them—saying, _I don’t know, man, you’d have to ask your dad about that_ , or _Your dad knows better than me, talk to him_.

He’s acting at last as Rick hoped he would all along, and Rick hates it. He tries not to watch Shane too closely and knows he fails—they’re always catching each other’s eye at odd moments, and it feels like attempting a delicate waltz where both participants keep stepping on each others toes. Carl has picked up on it and looks warily between them.

At last the conversation dwindles entirely, and they sit listening to the dark and motionless forest around them. The fire snaps and pops, flinging sparks into the air.

Rick straightens up. “We all should get some rest. We have work to do tomorrow.”

“What kind of work?” Maggie asks.

“Hard work. But it’ll be worth it. It’s too much to explain tonight. Let’s all try to get some sleep.”

Shane stands so abruptly that T-Dog, sitting next to him, flinches in reflexive surprise. “I’ll take first watch,” he announces, and sets off before anyone can voice either protest or assent. Rick feels as if the awkwardness somehow is his fault; like he’s just brought home a weird date for Thanksgiving dinner and spoiled the atmosphere.

He starts to get to his feet as well, but Hershel puts a hand on his arm, stilling him. “I ought to take a look at those injuries, before you turn in for the night.”

As much as Rick hates being worried over, he has to admit this is a good idea—he resigns himself to his fate and sits silently while everyone else gathers up their things, starts laying out bedrolls and blankets for the night, a little ways off from the fire. As soon as Hershel rolls his shirt sleeves up over his elbows, his entire demeanor changes, going efficient and professional, and Rick has no choice but to let himself be poked and prodded, examined from head to toe. Hershel doesn’t talk much except to issue the occasional instruction of how to stand or where to look, but he doesn’t seem too worried, at least, until he has Rick unbutton his shirt, takes a look at his ribs. Then Hershel’s face blanches a little; Rick really examines at the bruise for the first time since the old real estate building, and finds it worse now than it was then. So dark it’s almost black, looks like a burn. The lightest brush of Hershel’s examining fingers has him biting the inside of his cheek to keep from shouting.

To distract himself, he looks away, aims for a light tone. “That bad?”

“You want the good news or the bad news first?”

“There’s good news?”

Hershel takes his hand away, indicates Rick can button up his shirt again.

“The good news is I’d say this was lucky.”

“Didn’t _feel_ too lucky,” Rick mutters. He swipes a hand across his face and finds his skin sticky with sweat despite the chill of the night air.

“That concussion didn’t kill you. You should be counting your blessings for that. And you don’t have any broken bones. That’s lucky, too. A broken rib could have punctured an organ. You’d be off your feet for a few months at the least.”

“I don’t mean to question your medical opinion, Hershel, but something sure _feels_ broken.”

“I imagine it does. You have two displaced ribs. Sometimes these things go back into place on their own, but since it hasn’t yet, I’ll have to do it. That’s the bad news.”

“Doesn’t sound pleasant.”

“It won’t be.” He gives Rick a firm, sideways look. “I suppose you can be grateful whoever did this seemed to be planning on drawing it out for a while.”

Rick pretends to be distracted by the fire. Hershel has no reason to suspect any deception, but he’s remarkably keen, notices these things before he even knows there’s anything to notice. Rick tells himself it doesn’t matter; it isn’t the right time for a conversation about Merle.

“I suppose I can,” he says, without feeling.

“I’ll have to move those ribs back into place with my fingers. It’s like combing out a tangle.” Rick winces at the wording, but Hershel continues, frankly, “You’ll feel better when it’s done. It’ll be tender for a few days. You shouldn’t move around too much afterwards or they could slide out of place again. The worse news, I’m afraid, is we’re almost out of painkillers. I’d still suggest you take what we have left before we get started—”

“Not tonight. There’s something I need to do first.”

Hershel breaks off; he lets his expression do the questioning for him.

“It’ll be easier to show you,” Rick says. “There’s a place—somewhere we could stay. Somewhere to live.” This has Hershel’s attention. Rick shakes his head. “You’ll see it in the morning. It needs to be secured. We do that and I’ll be able to rest for a few days after. But we need to do it first. Can’t spend anymore time out here, and…”

He finds himself glancing away from the fire, to the place up towards the highway—it’s impossible to see through the dark and the trees, but if he strains he can imagine he sees an outline there, can hear the heavy fall of boots on dead leaves.

Hershel notices. There’s not much Hershel doesn’t notice. “You need his help for this plan of yours?”

“We need all the help we can get.”

“And I take it he’s not staying around for long?”

“Unless I ask him not to, I think he’s planning to leave tonight.”

“That might be for the best,” Hershel says, and Rick looks at him, a little startled.

“What makes you say that?”

Hershel’s mouth turns downwards and he lets out a slow breath through his nose and says nothing.

“Hershel?”

“I can see the way he looks at you. And I saw the way he looked at your wife.”

Rick feels as though he has too quickly downed a glass of ice water; as if his internal temperature has just plummeted by a few degrees.

Hershel lowers his voice. “It was after I’d finished up surgery on Carl. Lori was sitting next to the bed. Shane walked over and stood in the doorway. I could tell he was waiting for her to look up and say something to him. I thought it was strange at the time, because she ought to have—because he’d just gone and gotten those supplies and saved her boy. But she didn’t look up. She didn’t look at him at all. And after a minute he left. And when it turned out he _had_ left, I put two and two together.”

“Then you figured it out a hell of a lot faster than I did,” Rick mutters. He twists his hands together; stares down at his knuckles and recites, “It was complicated. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.” It sounds like bullshit even as he says it and he can tell Hershel doesn’t believe it, either. He raises his head, says with more certainty, “I’ve been with him a week. We can manage another day.”

“You think he’ll help you with this?”

“I think he will—I think he’ll do it for Carl, and for Judith.” Hershel’s looking at his face again. Rick can’t manage to meet his eyes. In answer to the unasked question, he says, “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. She’s my wife’s daughter. That makes her mine.”

“Does Shane see it that way?”

“He’ll have to. And if he doesn’t, it won’t matter soon enough. No matter how he sees it, he’s not sticking around.”

“Just long enough to help with this plan of yours.”

“Just long enough.”

“You’ve thought this through?”

“I have.”

“Then I won’t try to talk you out of it. You need anything from me, you say the word.”

With anyone but Hershel, Rick knows the same conversation would leave him feeling wrung out and exhausted and furious. Instead he feels a little better about the stupid, stupid thing he’s about to do. He offers a final nod and sets off into the woods, in the direction of those pacing footsteps.

Shane’s standing in the shadows of the trees a ways off from camp, holding the shotgun casually, making a show of being on watch. The light of the fire, a ways off, casts his shoulders into shadows, draws attention to the tense way he’s standing—as if he is poised at any moment to strike out, to run, to step into the shadows and vanish. His face is turned away, making it impossible to read any expression there, and hearing footsteps, he speaks without looking up.

“What’s on your mind, Rick?”

“We’re going to need your help tomorrow.” He says it frankly, before he can talk himself out of it. And once he has there’s a strange sense of relief, at having the words out. He can’t very well take it back now.

“My help. With what?”

“You know what I’m thinking.” That, at least, hasn’t changed. “And I know you don’t want to stick around here any longer than you have to. But this place could be somewhere safe for Carl. Somewhere for Judith to grow up. We can do it without you; you can say no. But I’d feel a hell of a lot better having your help. You do this one last thing, and you’ll have my gratitude.”

Shane gives a huff of laughter. “Oh, your _gratitude_.”

“And your share of any supplies we find,” Rick says, refusing the take the bait. “We’ll see what we can do about a vehicle, but that might be trickier. But any food, water, medical supplies, ammo—an equal share belongs to you if you help us with this. I know I only asked you to stick around until we found—”

“Sure.” He adjusts his grip on the shotgun, shifting its weight to rest against the opposite arm. An automatic, fidgety gesture he’s had since Rick first saw him holding a gun. “I’ll stay. I’ll help out. You want to try’n clear out that prison, I’ll help you do it. I reckon it’d be a good spot to hold out for the winter—maybe longer. You could make a real life for yourselves there. Only thing worries me is Carl, ‘cause if he thinks I’m staying…”

“You don’t need to worry about Carl.”

“Somebody does.”

He’s hoping, probably, if he’s nasty enough Rick will take back the request, tell him to leave, and he’ll be able to go with his conscience clear—their parting will be Rick’s fault. The prospect’s tempting. And if it weren’t for the prison—if he wouldn’t have to explain Shane’s absence to Carl alone come morning—Rick might just give him what he wants. Instead he keeps silent, lets the words hang in the air until Shane seems to grow unsure of them, sighs and says without venom, “Why don’t you get some sleep, man?”

Rick might say, _Didn’t you tell Dale the same thing once upon a time?_ But he doesn’t want to mention Dale, doesn’t want that conversation. Shane’s presence has a way of making him feel more aware of the holes in their group, of all the people he won’t happen to run into again, who are never coming back. Why, out of all of them, did it have to be Shane?

He heads back to their camp without another word, tries find way to make his bedroll comfortable on the cold ground. For a long while before he falls asleep he stares into the fire, eyes burning with its heat, expecting at any moment to hear a car engine turning over.

 

**:::**

 

Morning dawns chill and damp in the forest, a haze of fog close to the ground, and Shane is still there.

The group, gathering up their supplies, looks miserable and filthy and groggy from another night spent of the ground, and Rick’s announcement that he has something to show them before they move on isn’t met with as much enthusiasm as he might have hoped for. But when they come to the clearing of the trees and look out at the fences, Maggie catches in a breath and T-Dog gives a low whistle. Rick sees the exhaustion is gone from their faces—for the first time in what must over a year, they look hopeful, even excited. He explains what he plans to do.

“Got balls, I’ll give you that,” Daryl says. It’s as close as anyone comes to approval of the plan—they’re all so used to having any inkling of hope snatched away the moment they settle upon it that they try not to hope anymore, and they all regard the prison warily—a tightly wrapped gift which might very well contain a lump of coal. After a little discussion, Glenn says they ought to suss out the surroundings, get an idea of the layout of the place all around before they try—anything. What ‘anything’ might be he doesn’t say, but Daryl agrees to take a walk around with him and they set off together, leaving the rest of the group waiting in the forest for their return, their assessment.

It’s a tense bit of waiting—no one wants to say anything, afraid to jinx it. Rick, already decided, sees the merits of caution nevertheless. He steps away to give them all a bit of distance—catches Carl’s eye and gives him wink, as if to indicate this is all going according to some plan—as if he has a plan.

Shane brushes past his shoulder. “Can I talk to you a minute?” he says, voice low, and Rick reluctantly follows him a few paces away.

He’s still expecting, on some level, that Shane will back out of this—to say he’s reconsidered since last night, doesn’t want anything to do with this group anymore, with Rick. But instead Shane seems to be doing the math, looking out at the prison, brow furrowed.

“You really think this is going to work?” he asks. “’Cause I’m taking a tally here, and no matter what kind’ve plan Glenn comes back with, you might not have enough people to pull it off.”

“We can pull it off. We’ll have to.”

“You sure there ain’t somewhere else out there easier than this—”

“There’s nowhere else. Look at that.” He points to the prison. “Where else are there fences like that? Walls? Look how much land there is. If we can secure that—”

“Seems like a mighty big ‘if’, don’t it? Anything goes wrong, you’re gonna lose people. _More_ people.”

It’s as though he’s thrown a punch—or spit in Rick’s direction. Rick recoils—from the words, from the thought.

Shane lowers his voice further. “Dale. Andrea. Carol. And Hershel’s people…”

“It was all on the same night.” It’s the most he can get out—the details, about the barn, about the night itself, and the chaos and the blood and the screaming—the thought of reliving it now, in Shane’s presence, makes him almost shudder in revulsion. It would be like unloading a tale of woe onto the cashier at a grocery store—inappropriate, unfamiliar, ultimately pointless. He raises his head and meets Shane’s gaze evenly, refusing to be guilted now. “We’ll pull it off. Are you with me on this?”

“Don’t see why you bother asking. You’re going ahead with it no matter what I say. Just like old times, ain’t it?”

It’s not worth the effort to convince him. Rick heads back to the rest of the group without bothering to reply, but the comment has had a souring effect on his mood, and he waits for Glenn and Daryl to return feeling restless, agitated, working over a myriad of possible replies in his mind, ranging from the caustic and resentful to bitterly sentimental; at last fighting them all down the way he’s fought everything down over the past year. He knows how to tune out emotion, has gotten so good at it he thinks one day he might be done with it all at last, like extinguishing an errant spark, or grinding his heel down on an ant.

Daryl and Glenn return a little before midday. There’s a layer of fences, they report—a gate that can only be opened from within—but the outer perimeter that’s free of walkers, sealed off from the parts of the prison yard that are choked with them. From there they can access two of four watchtowers, gain a vantage point, a higher ground. Beyond is dicier terrain. A large open yard full of walkers. The prison itself sits inside a third layer of fences, and the gate between the two is open. Even more walkers coagulated around the prison itself.

Rick takes this all in—sees it with each word, like a chessboard laid out, a blueprint. For the first time it starts to seem real. Possible. “If we can get that inner gate closed,” he says, “we can keep them separated—pick off the ones in the field through the fences. Take it in sections.”

Glenn nods. “We get in that first layer, use the watch towers for cover. I’ll close the gate. I’m the fastest.”

“No,” Maggie says immediately. She fixes him with a hard look. “No way.”

T-Dog puts in, “I say we pick ‘em all off along the fences.”

“Thought of that.” Rick shakes his head. “Not an option. Enough of them pile up before we can deal with it, we’re looking at the fences collapsing, us stuck in between.”

“I can get to—” Glenn begins, but Maggie interrupts, “It’s a suicide run, you’re _not_ —”

“I’ll close the gate.”

They fall silent at once—turning to look at Shane, who’s standing a little away from them, arms crossed, expression a fixed and careful blank.

“You sure?” Rick asks.

“Yeah.”

Another moment’s silence. _Suicide run,_ Maggie had said, but if Shane wants to make it, he has no one to protest on his behalf, no one to stop him. Carl looks at him for a long while but when Shane refuses to meet his eyes, he looks at Rick instead, pleading silently with him to put a stop to this, to turn the plan down. Rick says nothing. He doesn’t see another way around it, and regardless of how he feels about Shane right now, if Rick had to place his bets one anyone being able to pull this off—it’d be him.

He straightens up, nods. “Alright. Daryl and T-Dog, you take the first watchtower as we go in. Carl, you go with Hershel to the second one. Glenn, Maggie, Beth—the three of you run along the fence, make a lot of noise, keep as many walkers distracted as you can.” To Shane, he says, “I’ll cover you from the first gate.”

Shane raises an eyebrow. “You up for that?”

“I don’t need to be able to run to shoot.”

They trade a look, a nod; it’s almost familiar, coming up with a plan, working together. Almost.

 

**:::**

 

The first phase goes well enough; they’re able to get into the first layer of fences with relatively little struggle, secure the cut-up chain-link at their backs with a bit of wire. Moving fast, Rick is struggling against a sharpening pain in his side by the time they reach the first gate. He leans against the chainlink to brace himself, trying to breathe shallow and quick. Maggie and Glenn and Beth moving off along the fences, shouting, picking a point as far away as possible. Already a few walkers are drifting in their direction. In the watchtowers flanking them, Hershel flashes a thumbs-up and Carl settles to kneeling with a rifle tucked against his shoulder, while in the other Daryl whistles, once, and calls down, “Ready!”

Rick undoes the latch on the first gate, separating them from the field. Beside him Shane is standing ready, breathing slow and everything about him pulled taut as an arrow on a string.

“You’re just getting the gate,” Rick says. “That’s all. You don’t need to worry about any of the rest of it—we’ll cover you. The gate, and you get in that guard tower next to it and close the door and stay there.”

“I know.”

“You borrowed Carl’s gun?”

Shane holds it up for inspection—a simple revolver, fitted with a silencer. The last thing they want is the noise drawing any extra attention to him on this run. Nodding, Rick’s fingers tighten on the chainlink, preparing to draw it open—he stops, tugs the axe from his belt and holds it out.

“Take this, too. Better than that knife you got if you get pinned down.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Would you just take it?”

Shane wrenches the handle of the axe from his hand.

“C’mon. Ain’t got all day.”

Rick pulls open the gate and Shane’s past him in a second, running hard across the field. The gate closed again at his back, Rick draws the unfamiliar Glock from his belt, heart thudding like he’s the one doing the running.

The distance across the field is a decent one—forty yards, maybe. A third of a football field.  Nothing Shane can’t manage. Nothing he’ll even find too taxing. A chorus of gunshots ring out from the surrounding watchtowers, and Glenn and Maggie and Beth yell all the louder to compensate. They’ll be hoarse by the end of it, but at least it’s keeping most of the walkers occupied. Rick shoots three that get too close to Shane, and Shane runs on past them, reaches the opposite gate in record time, gets it secured.

Rick’s relief is momentary, because almost at once Shane tucks the gun away at his belt, and grabs the axe instead. A pair of walkers drifting over towards him, and one long stroke of the axe crunches through both their faces, sends them crumbling to the ground. The path to the third watchtower is open now, but Shane doesn’t take it, ignores the safety of the closed door, stalks over to the next closest walker and puts the axe through the top of its head as well.

“Get in the tower!” Rick shouts, but whether or not Shane hears him over the gunfire and the rest of the shouting, he doesn’t react. The walkers drawn by Maggie and Glenn and Beth are losing interest in their unattainable goal, turning instead to the commotion at their backs, staggering away as moths drawn by a flame, and still Shane shows no interest at all in the tower—

Rick swears. He pulls the gate open, throws it shut at his back. He hears shouting from the watchtowers— “What the hell are you doing?” from Daryl, “Hey! Go back!” from T-Dog, and Carl’s voice, scared, “Dad!” He ignored them all, ignores the nauseating burst of pain in his side, and runs full pelt across the field. Bullets slicing the air around him. One of Daryl’s arrows goes neatly through the eye of a nearby walker. Another lurches suddenly in Rick’s direction and he takes the headshot without slowing his stride. A few yards away he sees the front of Shane’s shirt streaked with blood, walkers converging on him rapidly. A vicious swing of the axe lodges into the skull of the nearest one with a crunch, and sticks there. The walker falls, dead weight, and Shane plants a foot on what’s left of its face, tugging at the handle of the axe with both hands. Another walker closes in on him fast, fingers outstretched—Rick takes its head off with a shot from the Glock and reaches Shane a second later, grabs hold of his shoulder and hauls him up, unprotesting, towards the watchtower.

One last walker stands between them and the door—another headshot, and he needs to reload. He slams the gun back into its holster, reaches the door, throws it open, shoves Shane inside. The door is barely closed at their backs when he hears many hands slamming against it, a chorus of frustrated snarls.

Gunshots sound beyond the closed door, muffled. Dusty light filters in from one of the windows high overhead, catches on the sticky, glistening head of the axe. Shane gives it a solid shake, clearing it of some of the blood and bits of skull and brain, and laughs—quiet, exhilarated, breathless.

Rick wants to punch him for it. Might, even, if he wasn’t so focused on staying on his feet—on staying conscious. He leans against the wall. The pain in his ribs is insane, irrationally intense, like being hit with a wrench all over again. He can’t catch his breath around it, and little blotting neon flashes star behind his eyes.

Shane notices. He stops laughing, tosses the axe aside to the concrete floor with a clatter. “Hey, hey—you alright? Sit down for a minute, man—”

His hand touches Rick’s shoulder, and Rick throws it off with all the ferocity he can muster. He manages between agonized breaths, “What the _hell_ is wrong with you?”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you get in the tower after you got the gate closed?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I didn’t—”

“Do you think it would kill you, just once, to _listen to me_?” He braces a hand against his side—the pain is unrelenting, seems to be getting worse rather than better, makes him feel almost sick. “Oh, Christ.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask for the whole ‘last minute heroic rescue.’ Didn’t need it, either. I was handling it.”

“You call _that_ handling it?”

Shane’s posture stiffens; a dark note edges into his voice. “Maybe you’re used to _Daryl_ jumping when you say jump, but—”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Rick cuts across, not wanting to hear another word of that sentence. “How about next time you try and get yourself killed, you do it where Carl’s not watching? I’ll let you get right on with it. Hell, you’ll have my blessing.”

He braces his back against the wall and lets himself slide down it. Good thing Hershel’s close—good thing the shots out in the yard are dying down. He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to focus on breathing, and listens to the heavy fall of Shane’s boots on the concrete as he paces around, agitated. A scrape as he kicks the gory axe across the floor. The handle knocks against Rick’s boot.

“You’re _welcome_ , by the way,” Shane says.

“For _what_?”

“For getting your damn gate closed.”

 

**:::**

 

They get the field cleared in the next hour—Daryl’s voice alerts them it’s safe to emerge from the tower. The sun is bright in the western sky, and Rick shields his eyes against it to see Carl already running across the field towards him, heedless of the fallen rotted bodies he passes. Rick braces himself for an embrace he’s sure is going to hurt, a lot—but Carl runs past him, throws his arms around Shane instead, and it hurts worse.

“I couldn’t see from the tower—I thought you were—”

Shane reacts as though he’s being besieged by a large snake—recoiling at once, prying Carl away. Carl looks at him in confusion, the side of his face already wet with blood from pressing his cheek up against Shane’s shirt.

“Think you’re getting a little old for that, man,” is the only explanation Shane gives for stalking away across the yard, on the pretense of checking the fences are secure.

They’re able to deal with most of the walkers on the other side of the gate through the fence without wasting too much ammo. Cleaning the bodies away will be an unpleasant task for the beginning of the next day following, but for now they’re able to rest, to build up a small fire against the purpling sky. In one of the guard towers Glenn finds a map of the prison and by firelight they all lean over it, studying the outline of the place—the endless square rooms, winding halls, abrupt corners, door after door. Rick’s heart sinks with the realization this will be much, much more difficult than he anticipated.

“Place is like a labyrinth,” Daryl comments.

“Yeah.” Glenn frowns down at the map, tracing one hallway with his finger. “You think we’ll find a minotaur in there?”

Carl lifts his head. “A minotaur?”

“You know—Greek mythology, half man, half bull? Lives in a labyrinth?”

“That sounds _awesome_.”

“We’d be lucky if that’s _all_ we find in there,” T-Dog says. “If there’s half as many walkers inside as there are out here, and all those halls and corners—Something’s going to get the drop on us if we aren’t smart about this.”

“So we’ll be smart about it,” Rick says. “We’ll do it the same way we did this: section by section. Close off doors as we go. We’ll have a better idea of what we’re up against once we’re insi—”

A sudden stab of pain cuts him off mid-word. He leans back with a hiss. Hershel says, “I wish you’d let me reset those ribs for you now.”

“Not yet. Not until we have the prison secure.”

“Because you need to be able to move around?”

“Yes.”

“That seems to be going pretty well for you right now.”

Carl says, “Hershel’s right, Dad. You should—”

“We start at dawn, we’ll have the prison cleared by sunset,” Rick cuts across. “Move fast, do it smart, and this is the last night we’ll have to worry about it. Then we can deal with—” He looks over the place along the outer-ring of fences where Shane’s stalking around, keeping his distance from the rest of them, still wearing those bloodied clothes. “—everything else.”

 

**:::**

 

It isn’t easy going in the morning. The walkers on the other side of the fence are tightly packed, still agitated by the commotion of the day before. The nine of them manage it.

Inside, the first thing they’re able to access is Cellblock C, which sits on the west side of the building, cool and dark so early in the day. A single walker paces the length of the hall, and they deal with it, secure the doors at either side, and take priority of the place. Rotted out metal frame bunks in each room, toilet and tiny sink, concrete walls hung with nude posters or bare. They check and double check the place is clear, set down their bags, start to relax a little. Rick goes to the end of the hall and leans against the bars looking out. The prison beyond is shadowed, silent. From the map Glenn found, Rick knows what lies ahead is a maze-like stretch of ugly square halls that loop back upon themselves, plenty of opportunities to get turned around and disoriented, plenty of opportunities for something to catch them unawares. He listens to the rest of the group getting situated, starting to relax into the new space, trying to make the best of it.

He senses motion at his back, and speaks without turning. “We need to finish this fast. Don’t want to be sleeping with one eye open much longer. We all stick together, move slow—”

“You lost your damn mind?” Shane has the decency at least to keep his voice low. “You’re planning to run around in the dark, no idea what we’re going to find down there—”

“You have any better ideas?”

“Yeah.” He approaches, bangs his hand against the bars once. They ring upon impact, producing a solid, echoing sound. “Make some noise. Draw what we can to us first. These bars’ll hold.”

“We sure about that?”

“Meant to make it through a riot, ain’t they? It looks like things are going south, we got another bunch’ve bars at the end of the hallway. Get behind that, got a whole ’nother layer of defense.”

Glenn, apparently, has been standing somewhere nearby, because he puts in, “It’s like Helms Deep. Good plan.”

Rick glances between them. In truth, it does sound safer, if slower, than his method. But he supposes he’s being a bit eager to have the place secure so they can all finally relax a little—or maybe he’s just eager to have it secure so Shane can leave. Either way, he can see the merits of caution.

“Like Helms Deep,” he says. “Alright.”

 

**:::**

 

They spend ten minutes banging on the bars and nothing happens.

“Not loud enough,” Glenn says.

Daryl detaches himself from the rest of the group, heading off as he sometimes does without a word. Rick watches him go, knowing better than to question it, and sighs. “Seems like we’re on to Plan B.”

“Maybe we give it another minute.” Shane’s still looking off down the hallway like he’s hoping something will come stumbling out of the shadows.

It’s darkly satisfying to see him disappointed.

“Nothing’s here by now, there won’t be,” Rick says.

“We don’t know how far that hallway stretches, do we?”

“Can’t be _that_ far.”

“Maybe—”

“It was a good plan. No one’s fault it didn’t work out.”

From a ways off, he hears Daryl call out, “Hey,” but doesn’t turn to look at him, preoccupied with watching Shane’s expression cloud, turning unexpectedly bitter.

“I say we give it another couple of minutes. Still don’t like the idea of running off down there with no idea what we’re getting ourselves into.”

“We’ll play it smart.”

“Don’t care how smart you want to play it, it’s still—”

Daryl calls again, “Hey.”

“Why can’t you just admit it’s not going to work?”

“Because it _is_ going to work, Rick, if you wanna give it more than two minutes—”

“I’d like to get this done sometime before we’re all retirement age—”

“You sure have one hell of a time with any plan that ain’t your own, don’t you?”

“This isn’t about—”

A loud, rude whistle interrupts, stopping the argument from turning into a real classic. They both turn as one to look at Daryl—who, from one of the guard posts, is holding aloft a speaker and an eight track player.

“Intercom system,” he calls down. “Wasn’t there a generator outside?”

 

:::

 

There is a generator; low on propane and slow to start, but by the time they return to Cellblock C, rows of fluorescent lights have flickered dimly into life, casting them all in an unhealthy, pale light.

The only thing preset into the intercom is an awful, blaring siren sound that makes them all wince even at low volume. Maggie says, “ _That’s_ gonna get old real quick,” and goes with Beth for a quick detour out to the cars in the yard. They return a few minutes later, a few old eight tracks in hand. Among them a collection of the best of Johnny Cash, which Rick snatches from the pile and tosses over to Daryl, who examines it with a thin, wry smile.

“ _Folsom Prison Blues_ ,” he reads. “You think that’s a little on the nose?”

“Sure is,” Rick says, his mood lifting for the first time in days. They trade a brief look, equally amused.

“We gonna do this or the two of you want to spend the afternoon playin DJ?” Shane calls from the doorway, and the moment fades.

 

**:::**

 

Johnny Cash does the trick; once they start, more walkers than they could have expected come pouring out of the adjoining hallway, drawn by the noise. Two dozen, three, four. They look like they’ve been decaying for a while, hair almost all gone, skin receding from teeth and nails, concave stomachs and an unreal stench, like a meat locker with a broken cooling unit. Soon there are bodies piled against the bars, and it’s impossible to reach the new ones coming up behind. The walkers start climbing over others, snarling and snapping. A sort of morbid mosh pit. After about an hour, when the stream of them shows no sign of relenting, Rick decides they need to open the door just for a minute, drag some of the bodies through to lessen the pile. Then they’re standing among corpses, killing more through the bars.

It’s far from the most pleasant way to spend an afternoon, but less and less walkers come around the corner as they work, and then finally there are no more—like blood finally coagulating in a wound. The bars held. They weren’t expecting the work to be as exhausting as it turned out, but by the end of it everyone’s drenched in sweat, limbs shaking. They go through a gallon and a half of their remaining water.

It takes a while to clear enough bodies away from the bars to be able to open the door, and Rick has to give up on helping with it after only a few minutes. The effort of dragging or lifting anything at all makes him feel almost dizzy with the pain in his side. He feels Hershel watching him and tries to keep himself very still, his expression blank. At some point Hershel’s going to decide enough is enough and it’s time to reset those ribs no matter how Rick protests. He just hopes to delay the inevitable long enough to get the prison cleared.

They don’t have the prison clear by sunset as he’d hoped, and the first night they spend inside is an uncomfortable one. They shut down the generator to conserve what fuel there is, and the darkness that swells up in the halls is heavy and strange. No matter how many corpses they clear, the stench remains, and at a certain point there are too many bodies and they give up, leave a pile of them lying in the next hall, uncovered. The cots lay limp and flat on jabbing metal springs, and with only the lantern light to see by, the prison seems more like what it is: the cramped walls drawing closer still, everything muffled, confined. Daryl insists on sleeping on one of the guard rooms so as not to be in a cage, but Rick thinks the whole place feels like a cage.

He bunks with Carl and Judith. Hears every creak of the springs as Carl shifts around above him, every sound Judith makes in her sleep. The prison acoustics catch onto any noise, twist it around and send it back louder and stranger. He hears Hershel talking to someone in the next cell over. Quiet, uncertain footsteps he knows as Beth’s. T-Dog laughs quietly. The upward inflection of Maggie’s voice, a question—Glenn’s response.

Rick is so used to all their sounds, so familiar with all of them after months on the road, that it’s become as natural a backdrop to his life as his own breathing. But in the midst of it all he hears the unfamiliar silence from the cell at the opposite end of the hall. Shane keeping himself as far from the rest of them as possible. As far from Rick as possible. And in spite of the silence from his cell, Rick feels certain he’s lying there awake, too. How far away are they from each other, right now? Twenty paces? Thirty?

It’s a strange thought. Rick remembers trying to do similar calculations while at Hershel’s farm. Wondering, if he got in a car right then and started driving, how long it would take him to catch up to Shane—How many miles? How many hours? And as the days went on, the number increased until it was too large to even contemplate at all. An insurmountable distance. It seems impossible they should be so close now, after so long. It’s been over a year, and for the whole time Rick has tried to avoid thinking these things, tried to avoid thinking of Shane at all, like a man with a bruise or a broken limb who learns to walk in a crowd so the wound might not be jostled. Now he feels compelled to press the bruise, to twist the shrieking limb himself.

He isn’t aware of falling asleep so much as he is aware of time passing. In the morning they revisit his plan for clearing out the rest of the prison over meager breakfast of cold canned potatoes and string beans. They’ll have to go through each hall and each room one by one. But of course, even this can’t be easy.

The first problem is unsurprising: Shane doesn’t like the idea of sticking together, staying one unit. He makes a whole show of mapping out another route—splitting them off into teams of two for some of the trickier halls, so as to be sure they aren’t flanked by anything. Rick suspects it’s mostly for show, because opposing any of Rick’s plans is apparently one of Shane’s new favorite habits. A few nervous looks are exchanged around the group; everyone expects it to turn into a fight.

Rick says calmly, “If we run into anything we can’t handle and half of us are split off from the rest, we’d have no way to communicate. We stick together down there. Everyone keeps track of everyone. Go room by room.”

T-Dog frowns at the map. “Sounds like a good way to get ourselves flanked,” he says.

“This isn’t a vote,” Rick says. “We’re sticking together.”

He ought to be more suspicious when Shane lets the argument drop then, but he’s so eager to have the prison cleared that he makes no effort to press the issue and ensure they’re all on the same page. Glenn rolls up the map and they ready themselves.

They leave Carl and Beth and Judith back at Cellblock C, close the door at their backs. Hershel gives Beth’s hand a quick squeeze through the bars and Maggie nods to her, once. Carl’s frowning at the ground.

“You can handle the door if we need to get out of there fast?” Rick asks.

“Yeah. Dad—” His mouth twists. He’s working up to something. Rick waits. At last Carl says, “You should stay back here with Judith. I’ll go instead. You’re still hurt.”

“It’ll be fine. There can hardly be any left down here after all that yesterday, don’t you think?”

He reaches through the bars, puts a hand on Carl’s shoulder. Carl still seems unconvinced. He looks over and catches Hershel’s eye, and Rick can feel another round of protest on its way, one he might not be able to argue against.

“We doing this or what?” Shane asks. His voice from down the hall is too loud, echoing harshly.

Rick gives Carl’s arm one last reassuring squeeze and sets off. Almost at the turn of the hall he makes the mistake of glancing back and finding Carl still there, his pale, worried face pressed up against the bars, watching them as long as he can before they round the corner into the dark.

 

**:::**

 

Dusty fluorescent lights line the ceilings overhead, but the people who built the prison apparently weren’t too concerned with natural lighting. Some passages have no windows at all and the only light is from their flashlight beams, a confused jumble over concrete walls. Here and there they pass bodies, splashes of long-dried blood. The stench of rot is older here, staler.

They find one room with a closed door, three walkers behind it. Easy enough to deal with. Otherwise the prison seems empty. All the commotion the day before paid off.

They come up to a passage with three forks—one ahead, two leading off to the right or left. All three shadowed and windowless. Glenn steps up, looking between them, standing poised and nervous.

“On the map this part looks like a figure-eight. It goes past the kitchen and the mess hall and a whole bunch of little storage cupboards. Either way we go, we’ve got unknown on both sides.”

Rick raises the beam of his flashlight, takes a long look down each passage in turn. All indistinguishable from each other, all too long to make out the end of it or even a corner. They might well lead on forever into the damp and twisting dark.

“We’ll head left first,” he says, choosing at random. “Make a loop around, cut back through the middle hallway—”

“Or,” Shane interrupts, “I take the right with T-Dog; Glenn, Maggie and Hershel take the left; you and Daryl take the middle. Cover it all at once, don’t leave room for too much to sneak up on us—”

“We’re not splitting up. We’ve been over this.”

“It’s not the _worst_ plan,” Glenn puts in.

“We’re not splitting up,” Rick says again.

Shane seems to be putting all his effort into keeping his voice steady.“You want to explain to me why _not_?”

“Not particularly.”

“Because you said so, is that it?”

“Well, if you want to get right down to it—”

Daryl sighs. “Here we go,” he mutters.

“Maybe we oughtta do what you said, Rick—” Shane is losing the battle with his voice, getting louder. “Let’s take a vote. How about this: everyone in favor of being stupid so Rick can feel good about himself, please raise your hands—”

Rick takes a single step towards him.

Maggie gets between them, her voice thin and harsh. “Would you two just _stop_?”

“Listen—” Glenn joins her. He looks between Shane and Rick, hands held up, palms spread in a pacifying gesture. “Sticking together was the right call so far. But it’s too easy to get flanked in this part here. If something comes up behind us, we need to be able to run ahead and have someone there—same if something’s up ahead and we need to double back. Can we just agree to compromise, please?”

Rick doesn’t look at him once through this; in the half light, his gaze is fixed, unblinking, on Shane, who glares back. For the first time since that night in the real estate building, there’s a crack in the veneer, something real and ugly between them.

“Fine,” Rick says at last. The calm of his own voice is a source of satisfaction to him. “Compromise. We’ll split up.”

He can see the merit of the plan. Better—he can see the merit of playing against the narrative Shane’s working on, that’s Rick is controlling and inflexible and there wouldn’t even be a problem here if he could just surrender some of his need to be in charge. Best—if something happens down here and Shane winds up getting hurt, it won’t be on Rick’s conscience. He regrets this thought almost as soon as it occurs to him, only because if something happens down here, they’re _all_ in trouble.

They pair off, start down their appointed halls. Rick can feel Daryl watching him, tries to ignore it. The flashlight beam slices the darkness ahead of them like a letter opener cutting into a black envelope. Less bodies in the halls here, but more side rooms and storage cupboards, and it’s slow going, opening each and checking them. In one there’s a whole shelf full of nothing but rat traps—if the place has a rat problem, they’ll have to deal with that.

Rick tries to focus on these details, on the sweep itself, to keep his thoughts from turning in bitter directions. It’s no use. There’s a sensation of heat in his chest, a fuming tightness he can’t will away. If it were anyone else, anyone but Shane, he could disengage; could decide not to care. But Shane has the singular, infuriating ability to get under his skin with just a few words, a glance, a note in his voice. Maybe it’s a product of familiarity; maybe it’s just that Rick has spent the majority of his life _not_ fighting with Shane, and the experience is foreign and unexpected and feels fundamentally _wrong_ , like a part of his own being has turned against him. Like his own arm is trying to strangle him.

He looks over and finds Daryl’s gaze on him. Mostly to assure himself, he says, “He’s not sticking around long. Just helping us clear out the prison and he’ll take off.”

“Can’t say I’m too heartbroken hearin’ that,” Daryl says, and they move on to the next room.

It seems to be going well—a little too well. Rick entertains the brief, optimistic idea there may be nothing down here at all and all their arguing was for nothing. No sooner has this thought occurred to him than the silence of the prison shatters around a single, deafening _crack!_ of a shotgun blast off to their right. The sound comes again, and Rick is running by the third, heedless of the pain in his side. Another two gunshots follow—a terrible silence swells up in the wake of the fifth shot. They’ve been using axes and knives thus far, avoiding the commotion of guns. Guns are last resort. Something last resort is happening.

They round a corner and almost run head-first into T-Dog, rushing in the same direction.

“Just turned around and Shane was gone,” he says. “It’s like a damn maze down here—”

For one awful second Rick is sure this is happening because he wanted it to happen, because for one petty, dark moment he’d wanted the worst. His chest is an airless place, stuck full of icy pins and needles.

There’s the clatter of a door down the hall, a flashlight beam, footsteps—moving fast, but not running. Shane steps out of the shadows.

“Few biters back there. These blind corners, man.”

He’s unharmed, unruffled; focused on reloading the shotgun. Rick lowers his gun as the breath goes out of him, a sharp surge of relief. “God—You scared the hell out of me.”

Shane stops as abruptly as if he’s walked into an invisible brick wall. They look at each other, an uncomfortable moment, and Rick can feel Daryl and T-Dog staring as well, both taken aback. He’s as surprised as they are, unsure where the comment came from. It’s as though it had said itself.

T-Dog breaks the silence first. “Why’d you ditch me back there, man? Looked over and you were gone.”

“I thought you were following me.” Shane ducks his head, runs a hand across his mouth. “Easy to get turned around down here, I guess.”

“Alright—” Rick raises his flashlight, turns the beam between the two of them, “from now on, anyone gets separated, you sound off right away. Can’t afford to be getting mixed up down here. Is that clear?”

“As a bell,” Shane says, without venom.

With the halls at their backs clear, and the four of them double back to find Glenn and Maggie. The pain is starting up in Rick’s side again—momentarily unregistered in his panic—and he finds himself following a step behind, Shane and T-Dog leading. He winds up watching them through the dark—watching Shane, mostly, as if at any moment he might step into a dense patch of shadow and vanish. Rick knows he’s not even being particularly subtle, and senses Daryl notices his preoccupation—can feel his gaze again through the dark. This time Rick doesn’t meet his eyes, and makes no comment.

 

**:::**

 

They finish their sweep, repeat it twice more before nightfall, running into a few stragglers—mostly walkers that aren’t so much walking around anymore as they are crawling. Some trapped in side rooms or cells. By the time it’s over they’re all exhausted again, and Rick is starting to wish he’d let Hershel adjust his ribs before they started out. It’s too late now, he supposes, and he waves off another offer that night, saying he’s too tired to stand it, which is true. They agree he’ll do it tomorrow, no later, and shake hands on it.

Everyone’s too exhausted for much conversation by sundown, getting dinner ready in silence. There’s only so much to be done; Rick takes advantage of the moment to check out a section of the guards quarters, now accessible, and take a tally of the weapons and ammo stored there. They must have been right about this place falling fast at the beginning of things; there’s plenty. A few riot uniforms, pepper spray, tasers. Maglites, handcuffs, leg irons, zip ties, batons and face protectors. Finding any one of these items on the road could have meant the difference between life and death. Staring at it all now, Rick doesn’t know where to begin.

With dividing it up, he supposes.

He’s doing a quick count when he senses motion at his back; he knows who’s there before he turns.

“Looks like a pretty good haul.” Shane leans against the door frame, glancing around the room. There’s a smear of blood and other things across the collar of his shirt, the side of his neck, and he’s idly wiping it clean with a plain prison-issue washcloth. “Don’t suppose you found any spare parts for the Python in there?”

“Afraid not.”

“Figures, don’t it?”

It does; Rick wasn’t really expecting to find parts for a specific antique gun in a prison store room, and knows Shane wasn’t either.

He goes back to counting. “Nine people. Figure we divide this up nine ways.”

“Ten, you count Judith.”

“You think _Judith_ needs an assault rifle?”

“Might as well put something away for her now. Be like a kind of trust fund.”

Rick manages a half-hearted smile. He casts a glance in Shane’s direction. “You missed a spot.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ve got something on your shirt.” It seems better not to specify what, exactly, as it looks like a chunk of scalp and skull and brain. He gestures to indicate the spot on his own shoulder, and Shane mirrors him, brushing it off with a sigh.

“I’d say that’s gonna leave a stain, don’t you think?”

“Plenty of uniforms around here, if you’re looking for a change of wardrobe.”

Shane gives a quiet, reflexive laugh and looks up from scrubbing at the collar of his shirt with the towel, his eyes glittering—the door at the end of the hall creaks open before he can reply.

“Hey.” Carl’s voice, a second before he rounds the corner and peers into the ammo closet. He stops short; his eyes widen to almost comical proportions. “Whoa.”

‘Whoa’ is about right. Rick finds his smile a little easier now. “Dinner ready?”

“Yeah.” Carl’s gaze travels over the contents of the room, taking in each piece. “Is some of this going to be mine?”

“Some of it.”

“Can I have _that_?”

Rick looks where he’s pointing; a sleek black pump-action shotgun almost as long as Carl is tall.

“When you learn to fire it. It’s not a toy.”

“Will you teach me how to fire it?”

“We’ll talk about it. You run along to dinner; we’ll catch up soon.”

“Okay.” Carl lingers a moment long, still transfixed, before throwing a final parting glance at Shane and heading off down the hall, back to the creaking door.

For lack of anything better to say, Rick tries, “Nothing a little WD-40 can’t fix,” because it was something his dad used to say at the sound of any small creak or whine from their house’s old wood doors. Shane doesn’t answer, doesn’t look at him. The fast-setting sun at his back leaves the room dimmer than it was a moment ago.

Rick is about to say they should go and see about dinner when Shane says flatly, “Reckon it’s now or never, huh?”

There’s no need to ask what he means. Rick straightens out a box of ammo on one of the shelves, to give his hands something to do.

“It’s been a long day. Tell him what you need to tell him tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“You planning on heading out tonight?”

“Well, you know the old saying. Fish and company.”

It seems the past few days have been strung loosely together around the inevitability of this conversation. Rick knew it was coming, but contrasted with the almost-ease of a moment ago, finds it somehow shocking that it’s here now. He swallows hard and says, “I don’t think there’s a car we can afford to spare. If you want, tomorrow I can have someone help—”

“I’ll be fine.”

His voice is still completely devoid of any inflection; it’s like the white noise of running machinery. Rick falters, unsure how to answer it. He knows how to handle Shane in a screaming rage better than this.

He’s starting to say something when Shane speaks instead, abruptly, “Let’s not do this right now, alright? We’ll divide things up come morning. Been a long day, like you said.”

“Whatever you think is best.”

Shane goes without another word; Rick stays behind a moment, not wanting to walk with him to the cellblock, not feeling particularly welcome to. The last of the light beyond the small barred window in the hall slips away, leaving behind a line of strange, poisonous red on the horizon.

 

**:::**

 

They don’t linger over dinner. Still cold canned food, things scavenged from the road. Tomorrow they’ll see what there is to see in the kitchens, but the thought of wading through corpses to reach it now is unappetizing to all of them. Afterwards the conversation turns briefly to what they can expect out of the following days: clean up, mostly. Burning the bodies somewhere safe. Improving fortifications. Everyone’s too exhausted to go far into specifics, and they clean up and head to bed well before nine.

But once there, Rick can’t seem to actually get to sleep. Every sound, every small noise and shift, draws him abruptly back to consciousness. Tonight there’s more noise than the night before—Judith won’t settle for a while, and when she finally does, Carl can’t seem to get to sleep, either. Rick lays there for a while listening to the shift of springs overhead, a series of annoyed sighs and quiet grumbling, a distinct lack of snoring. The rest of the prison sounds have died down, gone silent, and still the shifting around continues.

“Carl,” Rick says quietly, after it’s gone on a while. “You alright?”

“Just can’t sleep.”

“Neither can I. You want to climb down here and talk for a minute?”

“ _No_ ,” Carl says. He seems to make an effort at lying still for a few minutes—then sighs again and gives up and climbs down out of the bunk.

Rick sits up and switches on the lantern he left on the shabby little nightstand, keeping it as dim as possible. In the half light, Carl’s face is pale and a little blotchy. Rick holds out a hand to him. “You been crying?”

“I think I’m allergic to the dust in here.” Carl sits next to him on the lower bunk, tucks his legs up to his chest. He looks so small, all folded up like that. Like he’s seven years old again.

The dust allergy might be an excuse, might not, and either way Rick doesn’t push it. The two of them sit there for a while in silence, watching the shadows thrown by the lantern light dance and dip wildly around the room.

“How’re your ribs?” Carl asks.

“Just fine. Doesn’t even hurt anymore.”

“Are you lying?”

“Yeah, because I want you to think I’m tough.” Rick reaches over and ruffles a hand through Carl’s hair, because he can—because it’s been too long since he’s been able to. Carl never takes his hat off anymore, except for bed.

“You’re going to let Hershel fix it for you tomorrow?” Carl asks.

“Yes.”

“Dad.”

“You know you sound like your Grandma Joyce sometimes?”

Carl laughs, quietly.

“Tomorrow we can see about getting one of the other cellblocks cleared out, so people can spread out a little,” Rick says. “I’ll probably stay here, and you and Judith could move a few cells down. Be like having your own room again.”

Carl, resting his chin on his knees, gives a little nod. “Not sure I remember what that’s like.” Even at Hershel’s farm, he was stuck in the same room with Rick and Lori most of the winter. The house wasn’t built to comfortably house fourteen people. “Might be weird.”

“You’ll have Judith for company, at least.”

“What age do babies start to talk?”

“About a year. You started talking on your first birthday.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d I say?”

“Well, you weren’t too big of a fan of applesauce, and your mom was trying to get you to have some. So you said, ‘No.’ Seems like that turned into a bit of a habit.”

Carl grins. They fall into silence again, listening to the small sounds that Judith makes in her sleep, to the noises in the prison. Maybe that’s what it is—they’ve been on the road so long they’re both used to the sounds of crickets and night animals, to having someone on watch moving around nearby. The minutes tick by, and Rick hears Carl’s breathing deepening and slowing next to him, his head dipping again towards his chest. Rick moves to turn off the lantern again, as carefully as possible, and Carl’s voice takes him by surprise.

“Can we leave it on?”

Rick draws his hand back. “Yeah.”

“Just a little longer.”

“As long as you want.”

He waits until he’s sure Carl is asleep, until he hears the first light hint of snoring next to him, then he carefully gets out of bed. Carl stirs a little. Rick prompts him to lay down, tugs an old scavenged wool blanket up over his shoulders. Carl keeps his eyes squeezed shut, presses his face into the pillow, and Rick stands there looking at him with a wave of almost unbearable tenderness swelling within his chest—and then he sees that Carl’s hand is tucked under the collar of his shirt, holding tight to that pendant, and the tenderness chills, turns sharply painful.

He gathers up the Glock from the nightstand, still unaccustomed to its weight, and leaves the lantern on at his back when he leaves the cell, in case Carl wakes up in the middle of the night. The cellblock beyond is dark, a winding bunch of unfamiliar hallways. Rick walks without a destination in mind—only knows when he pushes open a door to the chill night beyond that fresh air on his face was what he needed. He draws in a deep breath of it, tilts his head back to look at the sky so full of stars it makes him feel a little dizzy. A slow streak of light moves between them, and for a moment he takes it for a shooting star—before realizing it’s only a satellite, going on with its business even though there’s no one left to give a damn about it anymore, a ghost that doesn’t know it’s a ghost.

Everything looks different at night. The lines of things softer, bent in ways that would seem illogical under the sun. Rick always does his best thinking at night, drawing conclusions he wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Seeing the angles to things that are obscured by the practical light of day. When he was fighting with Lori—often—he used to tell her that he just needed to a night to figure out what he meant to say, to get his words in order. He’d take himself on a walk, or go and sit on the porch steps for a while. It usually worked. Worked well enough, at least.

He circles the prison twice before the pain in his side catches up with him. He sits down on one of the benches tucked against the wall. The place still smells like corpses, like sweat, basketball, tarmac. He sits his with his elbows braced on his knees, and turns the wedding ring on finger, looking out at fences and yard.

Tomorrow there’ll be no reason for Shane to stick anymore. That’ll be the end of it—and what a strange end it will be. After all of that—after, impossibly, finding each other again, twice, it’ll end with the two of them shaking hands and parting ways.

He sits there for too long—for the whole night, really, trying to work it out. The chill seeps into his skin, not enough to set him shivering, but enough to keep him awake as the minutes tick by, then the hours. It lingers even as the sky lightens in the first show of false dawn.

There’s a lull, then, between the night sounds and the morning ones, a moment of perfect stillness, without cars, without the rest of the world. Rick has an idea that if he stays here, perfectly still, he can stay in this quiet moment indefinitely. The time for decision might never arrive.

He hears what he thinks must be the sound of someone dropping something heavy back in the prison—a creak, or clank. People waking up, starting to move around.

The door to the prison opens with a huge sound, squealing on rusty hinges. From where he’s sitting Rick can look over and see the walkway leading from it. He knows somehow before he does who’s going to be there.

Shane doesn’t see him at first, walking with his head bent. He looks half asleep still, was never much good at waking up without coffee. Hair all out of place and sticking up at the back, a dark canvas jacket thrown on over the same stained and bloodied clothes he wore yesterday—as he walks he straightens the collar, frowning, reaches into his pocket. He still doesn’t see Rick as he draws out a pack of cigarettes, draws to a halt to strike a match and light one.

“Really?” Rick says. “Still?”

Shane doesn’t exactly jump—he’s never been easily startled—but he does flinch, take a step away. His gaze settles on Rick and his expression darkens.

“Did you _sleep_ out here?” he mutters, shaking out the match. He seems to realize he’s still holding a pack of cigarettes and holds them out in offering.

“I’m good on that,” Rick says. “I like being able to breathe.”

“Well, you sure are a person of a _superior_ moral caliber, ain’t you?”

The crickets are coming awake again, so the silence that falls between them isn’t entirely complete. Shane doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands or how he wants to stand—his gaze keeps skipping around, too: over the fences, the forest beyond, the dew-covered grass at his feet. Rick finds himself doing the same.

“It’s a bit of a fixer-upper, isn’t it?” He indicates the field between the fences. “Add a pool over there, it’ll do wonders for the resale value.”

The joke falls flat. Shane doesn’t answer, just stands there shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his face turned away. Then,

“Koi pond.” He casts a knowing, sideways look in Rick’s direction. “You know that’s where the real money’s at. Everyone and their grandma’s got a pool nowadays, but a koi pond? Hell, that just screams white khakis and tiny dick syndrome, don’t it? Koi pond—that’s the way to go.”

An out-of-practice smile tugs at the corners of his lips as he speaks, and Rick finds himself returning it.

“Well, there’s already a kitchen island,” he says.

“And all those bedrooms—”

“Good neighborhood, too.”

They trail off—both amused a little more than it is funny. After a second Shane’s smile wavers and breaks, and he gives a little shake of his head, as though brushing the moment away. “You got your work cut out for you here, man.”

In the field beyond the fences a single walker, dressed like it’s headed to church, makes its meandering way towards the fences. Not hurrying. Its face turned towards them, like it’s looking back, considering things.

Rick watches it for a while, draws in a deep breath and says, “You’re right about that. This isn’t going to be easy. Tell you the truth, it’s going to be a _lot_ of work. But I think—just maybe—it can be alright.” He listens for a moment to the slow, martial drum of his heartbeat, counting out the beats, then lifts his head. “I think it’s worth a try, at least.”

Shane stares back at him, uncomprehending.

“Carl needs someone to teach him how to handle a shotgun,” Rick says. “I keep telling him we’ll get around to it, but we never seem to find the time. I’m sure we will sooner or later, and I can do it, but you were always a better teacher than I was. Maybe one of these days we could figure out a place where the noise won’t draw too much attention, take some time, you show him a thing or two.”

He trails off. Shane blinks first, glancing away, his face going blank. The walker in the field is moving almost parallel to the fences, like it’s not thinking too much about getting in, like a child feigning disinterest in dessert. Rick expects at any moment it will change direction and slam its hands against the chainlink.

Shane drops the cigarette to the concrete, grinds it out with the toe of his boot. “I’ll show him what I know.” He lingers a moment more, face turned away, as if expecting something more—maybe that Rick will announce it was all a trick, a joke—then at last steps away without another word, heading back into the prison.

Rick stays where he is a while longer, the rising sun warm on his face. The walker beyond the fences keeps its course. Going wherever it’s going. Rick watches it make its way through the grass and weeds, staggering on, on—and out of sight.

 


	3. November

**_NOVEMBER_ **

 

**:::**

 

In the kitchen Rick finds a stock pot on the stove full of human bones. Femurs, ribcages, fingers, vertebrae. The air is thick with the unpleasant odor of propane and the knob on the burner is still switched to high. The gas must have run on and on until it petered out, leaving murky, molded water to stagnate.

The pantry is stripped bare. Rick checks and double checks, but there’s not a crumb, not a fleck of flour anywhere. Bags of trash lie piled in the cafeteria, torn open wrappers, napkins. There are four bodies, three of them sporting bite marks, all their heads mangled from shotgun blasts, all in dusty blue jumpsuits. Another prisoner’s uniform sits in the corner with the trash bags, a bloodied pile, a mess.

It doesn’t take much to work out what happened. Rick runs a hand over his mouth, swallows down a quick surge of nausea and horror. He carefully dumps the water from the soup pot into the sink, turning his face away from the smell, and empties the bones into a black plastic garbage bag. He’s glad he didn’t ask Carl to check the pantry with him. He holds the garbage bag as far away from himself as possible on the way out of the prison, but barely makes it to the hall before running into Hershel.

“It’s light,” Rick says in a rush. Ever since resetting those ribs—a few minutes of astounding, unbelievable pain that ibuprofen did nothing to lessen—Hershel’s developed a habit of materializing out of the shadows with a look of stone-cold disapproval if Rick lifts anything, or even thinks about lifting anything.

Hershel holds out a hand, and, with some reluctance, Rick gives it to him. Mercifully, Hershel doesn’t open it, just frowns as he feels the weight. He stopped short of insisting on bed rest, but Rick knows better than to push his luck on the matter. Someone else will have to handle the clean up on the rest of that gruesome scene.

“Will you point Daryl towards the kitchens, if you see him?”

Hershel hefts the garbage bag over his shoulder, and Rick tries not to wince at the sight. “I will. Is the pantry still stocked?”

“No,” Rick says. To his relief, his voice comes out normal, even casual. “It’s not.”

 

**:::**

 

It’s three days dragging all the bodies out of the prison, and Rick, feeling useless, can’t help with any of it. There doesn’t seem much point in standing by and trying to issue directions—Shane has that more than covered—and sitting still makes him edgy. In the end he winds up wandering the prison, getting used to the layout, and eventually veers into an administrator’s office. The desk is strewn with the usual array of office supplies. Manila folders and staplers and stacks of paper. On the wall, a poster of a branch-climbing kitten urges viewers to _Hang In There!_ It would be an almost normal room if not for the corpse draped over the rolling chair at the desk, a gun still in its withered hand and the upper half of its head missing. Rick nudges the chair away with the toe of his boot and turns to look over the desk.

The first thing he finds of any interest are blueprints of the prison, and what’s it’s built on. An old map of what looks like mine tunnels and a letter stapled to it, some sort of yearly code inspection which the prison cleared. No danger of tunnel collapse. Rick imagines the idea of a mine system nearby, however inaccessible, must have been fertile ground of plenty of half-formed dreams of escape, when this place was up and running. He’s taking a second look over that map to see if it might be of any use—a second way out of here, if one day they need it—when something else catches his eye, and he freezes. A blue sheet of paper labelled _EMERGENCY WELL ACCESS_.

He spends the afternoon on it, checking and double checking the instructions as he follows them. He hasn’t had the best history with plumbing related home improvement projects in the past. Just before noon on the third day he’s rewarded with a rush of clear, fresh-tasting water when he turns the tap. He has the brief, odd urge to find someone to high-five at his victory, but there’s no one nearby—T-Dog, Shane, and Daryl are out beyond the fences, burning the pile of accumulated bodies, everyone else occupied with their own tasks. In the end he decides to celebrate on his own before breaking the news, and enjoys the first real shower he’s had in a while—it’s not warm water, but a luxury nevertheless. He spends some time scrubbing the dirt from beneath his fingernails, trimming his hair as best he can, shaving properly for the first time in weeks—by the end of it, his reflection in the prison’s small, cracked mirror is recognizably human again, recognizably his own.

He finds Carl standing along the inner layer of fences, watching a plume of smoke trail up beyond the treeline. Even at this distance, the air smells like burning flesh. When Rick draws near, Carl looks up, and his eyes widen.

“Your face looks weird,” he says, by way of greeting.

“You know, with the world the way it is, at least I can take some solace in knowing all those times I tried to teach you manners didn’t go to waste.”

Carl grins. “You got the water running?”

“I did. It’s cold, but you can get a shower now, if you want.”

Carl nods towards the smoke. “I just want to make sure everyone gets back alright.”

“Glenn and Maggie have it covered from the watchtower—”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind waiting.”

Rick settles in to wait with him. A breeze catches up the smell of gasoline and rot in their direction, but the smoke is thinning out, and after a while the thin line of it above the treetops vanishes altogether. Walkers in the field stagger in confused circles for a few minutes, as if unsure which lure to follow, before eventually resettling against the fences like determined flies.

Carl says, “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course you can.”

“Are we going to tell Daryl about Merle?”

Rick isn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

“Of course we are— _I_ am.” He runs a hand over his cheek. The air feels colder on his bare skin, raw. “Haven’t found the right moment yet.”

He’s beginning to suspect there’ll never be a right moment for that conversation—soon he’s going to have to pick a moment and make it the right one. He just hopes they’re all braced for the inevitable fallout.

“I don’t think you should,” Carl says. When Rick looks at him, surprised, he adds in a rush, “It just—I don’t think it would do any good.”

“What do you mean?”

“It would just hurt him if he knew, wouldn’t it? And it’s not—I mean, he’s not going to find out unless we tell him. I thought—”

“You been talking to Shane about this?”

“No. Why?”

“Sounds like something he’d say.”

That’ll be another conversation to have, and sooner than later. Carl has always looked up to Shane, goes to him for things Rick would rather handle himself, and Shane doesn’t do much to discourage him. If this is going to work, Rick realizes, any foggy boundaries in their roles with Carl are going to have to get a lot clearer in a hurry.

As if sensing what Rick’s thinking, Carl looks up at him, his gaze clear and even under the shadow of his hat. “I’m glad he’s staying,” he says.

“I know.”

“Does this mean you’re friends again?”

Rick decides not to answer that. “We have to tell Daryl what happened. Merle was his brother. How would you feel if something happened to Judith? Wouldn’t you want to know?”

Something passes across Carl’s face. He scuffs the toe of his shoe on the grass and says, “You haven’t told anyone about _that_ , either.”

On the other side of the river bank, an aspen shivers—a crow bursts up out of the leaves, veering away from the remnants of smoke.

“Seems like we’ve been keeping a lot of secrets lately, doesn’t it?” Rick says.

“I mean—it’s important. We should tell Hershel at least.”

“Why Hershel?”

Carl takes a moment to choose his words. “If he can figure out why Judith’s immune, couldn’t it be—a cure, maybe?”

“Hershel’s not that kind of doctor. There’s nothing he could do, even if we told him.” Nothing except bring up the same point about a cure, again, and Rick isn’t sure he can stand hearing anything more about _cures_ from Hershel. He shoves the thought away. “We’d need to find a doctor like Jenner. Not too many of those left, these days.”

“What about DC?”

“DC?”

“Well—shouldn’t there be doctors there?”

“Why DC?”

They’ve never seen any sign or indication DC’s a better shot than anywhere else in the world, and so far as Rick recalls, they’ve never even considered it as a viable option.

“I don’t know. Just what everyone talked about.”

“When did we talk about that?”

Carl twists his fingers between sections of chain link, seemingly fascinated by it. “After Mom died.”

Just beyond the trees, the low sound of an engine, the crunch of tires on gravel. The rest of the group getting back. Rick straightens up.

“I’ll get the gate,” he says. “You draw some walkers down that way—”

Carl nods, already setting off—he looks so solemn doing it, his expression closed and professional and adult, and it sets off a sharp, unexpected pang in Rick’s chest. Before he catches himself, he says, “Carl.”

“Yeah?”

 _I’m sorry,_ Rick almost says— _I’m so sorry. She was my wife, but she was your mom, and I left you alone—_

“We found somewhere safe here,” he says. “We don’t know for sure if anything would be waiting for us in DC, if we went. As for telling people—we can, if you want to. It won’t change anything. But we can.”

Walkers are starting to drift towards the sound of the approaching truck—Carl looks out at them, and Rick sees his thoughts start to move behind his eyes, but can’t read any of them.

Then Carl shakes his head once, quick and decisive. “It won’t change anything,” he repeats, and sets off again, making a commotion as he moves further on down the fence, and the nearest walkers follow after him.

Rick watches him go. Knows he must have made yet another mistake, somewhere in that conversation, but there’s no time for undoing it. He draws open the gate for the truck to pass through, slides it closed in the face of a disappointed-looking walker.

“Almost didn’t recognize you,” T-Dog says, climbing out of the truck. He’s covered in blood and soot, and Shane and Daryl aren’t any better off. T-Dog makes a gesture at his own chin, and Rick can’t help mirroring it, self-conscious. “Take that as a good sign about the water…?”

“Got it running,” Rick says. “Just in time, from the looks of things.”

“Not kidding about that. Don’t even know half of what all I got on me out there.”

Daryl, predictably, mutters a _Don’t drop the soap_ joke, but sets off towards the prison all the same, T-Dog keeping pace with him. Shane lingers at the truck, tucking the keys into the sun visor, dusting something unpleasant off the seats. His gaze slides sideways to catch Rick’s.

“Gotta say I’m relieved, man. Had me worried for a while there you were joining up with a ZZ Top cover band.”

Rick supposes he must have been saving that one for a while. “Everything go alright out there?”

“Got everything burned, got back in one piece. I count that as a victory.”

“So do I. Good job.”

Shane nods, feigning interest in the truck again, as if the praise has made him uncomfortable. Rick looks away, pretending to be looking for something along the fences, smoothing a hand hand down over the front of his shirt and trying to come up with something else to say. It’s the closest they’ve come to being alone together in days. He catches in a breath to start a sentence, hears Shane do the same at the same time, and breaks off—Shane stops, too, and they stand there looking at each other, both waiting.

“You first,” Shane says, after a moment.

“I didn’t really have anything.”

They would’ve laughed at the awkwardness, a couple of years ago. Now they both wince.

“Just figuring we ought to double up on watch for a day or two,” Shane says, at last.

“You think someone might’ve seen the smoke?”

Shane shrugs. “We were quick as we could be with the whole thing. Still, that other group I was with ain’t too far off.”

“Is that something we need to be worried about?”

“Nah. Just being cautious.”

He doesn’t look worried, doesn’t sound worried; still, it’s not the first time he’s mentioned that group, and it has Rick’s attention. “How about the two of us take a drive together, scope out their camp?” he says. “I’d like to have a sense of who our neighbors are.”

“Couldn’t hurt.” Shane closes the truck door, too hard—but he doesn’t seem agitated, said once he just likes the sound of it. “Ought to spend some time cleaning out this place first, don't you think?”

Rick is about to say it doesn’t seem like much of a priority, but in the corner of his eye he catches motion: Carl, making his way back through layers of fences, head down, avoiding looking at the trail of walkers following him along the chainlink. There’s still that too-adult look on his face, and it gives Rick a quick, unexpected skip of panic. That look, he thinks, might never be entirely absent again. All the softness falling away from Carl’s face and leaving behind only stark foundations and the wary, darting gaze of a prey animal.

“Would be nice to scrub out some of the blood, make it a little more homey,” Rick says. He does some quick mental math. “We’ll head out in two days. Work on the prison until then.”

It won’t get done in two days, but it’ll be enough time to clear out the worst of the mess in the cells and the common areas.

“Think it’ll do us all some good,” Shane says. He’s looking at Carl, too.

They start up the incline together. Rick makes an effort at relaxing his shoulders. He knows he has to press whatever tentative ease they’ve managed to conjure up, can’t wait for another opportunity to come along. He says, as lightly as he can, “You talk to Carl lately?”

“About what?”

“Anything.”

He gets no answer. He’s forgotten how useless it is trying to be diplomatic with Shane. Nothing for it. Rick looks quickly towards the prison, checking there’s no one within earshot, and says, “Carl thinks we shouldn’t be telling Daryl what happened to Merle.”

Shane stops walking. “And you figure he got that from me?”

“ _Did_ he?”

“Ain’t talked to him about Merle. Not a word, since—” He breaks off, passing a hand through his hair, agitated. “Since that first night. Jesus, Rick, you think I’d say a thing like that to him—”

Their eyes meet, and he stops mid-sentence. Rick supposes the answer is clear enough.

“You’re saying he just came up with it on his own?”

“Must have. Looks like you don’t get a scapegoat on this one.”

He sets off towards the prison again, walking fast, a clipped pace that says, _Don’t follow_. Rick falls back into step with him, anyway.

“You’re telling me you _don’t_ agree with Carl?” Rick presses, not believing it.

“Telling you I got no opinion on this thing one way or another.”

“You have an opinion on everything.”

Shane laughs, a hard, humorless sound in the back of his throat. “Starting to sound like you _want_ me to argue with you.” He shoots Rick a brief, searching glance. “That what this is? You looking for a way out of that conversation? Want me to convince you it’d be better for Daryl if he never finds out?”

In some guilty corner of his mind, Rick supposes that’s close to the truth. He sifts his words. “At one time or another, you must have assumed all of us were dead.”

Shane only hesitates for a moment before saying, “You ain’t. Got good news there.”

“For the most part.”

They stop walking again at the door to the prison. Rick feels as though he’s about to leap from a high diving board and is trying to get over the churning in his stomach. Before he can second guess himself, he asks, “Would you rather you didn’t know?”

He doesn’t say, _About Lori._ He doesn’t have to. The air between them winds a notch tighter. This is dangerous territory, and they both sense it.

Shane looks back out at the field behind them. The turn shifts his face into shadow, makes it impossible to read his expression. “Can’t rightly say. You’re on your own with this one.” He straightens up, draws the door open. “Might not want to stand too close right now, man. Got the smell of that burn pile all over me,” and this time when he goes on ahead Rick falls back, and lets him go.

 

**:::**

 

It’ll get better. Rick tells himself it will and tries hard to believe it. The past few days have been impossibly strained. The topics of _Lori_ and _Judith_ feel like a pair of deadly landmines, leaving them both treading carefully, afraid any second they'll hear a _click_ underfoot. There’s no way to talk about it. Rick suspects they’re not going to find a way, either, at least not for a good long while. He tells himself it’ll be easier once the dust has settled, once some of those tense, uncertain edges have been worn down, but he has no idea how long that might take. In the meantime, he supposes, there’s nothing for it; the two of them spend their days hyper-aware of each other, working through what minimal interactions they do have like actors in a play. They perform the parts of their old selves, each conversation something to be thought out, considered and turned this way and that long before the words are ever said.

It’ll get better. It has to.

 

**:::**

 

With the cells clear, they’re able to spread out, to have some space they haven’t had since the farm, privacy they haven’t had since well before that. Rick is grateful when Carl, despite this freedom, doesn’t go far; he selects a cell only a few down from the one Rick has staked out for himself, saying the sunlight through the high windows lands most strongly there, and Judith likes it.

They set to work over the next few days cleaning up the all the blood, washing out gore streaks on the concrete, digging rotted skin from door frames and hinges, swiping cobwebs out of corners. During the day they prop the doors wide with rocks and open the windows that aren’t soldered shut to clear out some of the smell. Dust motes spin wildly in the sunlight. They keep music going over the intercom system—any tapes they can find—to make the process more bearable. The noise is a risk, but the fences show no sign of budging, and though they take Shane’s suggestion of doubling up on watch, everything remains quiet. It’s worth it, besides. Judith picks up her head at a thread of bassline, the strange echoes of it through the prison’s acoustics. She’s barely heard music before, and doesn’t seem to know what to make of it, but after a moment she smiles.

“I think she likes this song,” Carl says—his way of saying _he_ likes the song playing, a light-hearted, repetitive melody.

The music puts everyone in a better mood; Rick can’t help but be surprised when he catches an unrestrained thread of laughter from the hallway, or hears T-Dog humming along to a chorus. They haven’t been able to relax, even a fraction, since the farm. Rick has one crystal clear image in his head of Lori leaning over the railing of Hershel’s porch, sometime in early spring, eyes closed, tilting her face up to catch the sun. She’d spent so long looking worried and unhappy that Rick had stopped mid-step to watch her, to commit the moment to memory.

One song ends and segues into another, something everyone else seems to know, as cheerful as the last. Rick glances up at the wrong moment and sees Glenn catch hold of Maggie’s hand as she walks by, lifting it over her head and twirling her in a quick circle, catching her against his chest, both of them laughing.

Rick turns quickly away, and scrubs harder at a bloodstain.

 

**:::**

 

He’s making sure the truck is properly packed when he closes the cab door and finds Daryl standing on the other side of it. His sudden appearance gives Rick a bad start, sends his hand flying automatically to his gun. And as he realizes who it is, he has to hold back a different kind of flinch, has to turn away before Daryl can read anything guilty in his expression.

“Anyone ever told you you ought to wear a bell around your neck?” he mutters. It’s been more than a week now and he hasn’t said anything about Merle. Too long. He can’t keep finding excuses to put it off.

“Been suggested,” Daryl says. He jerks his head towards the car. “Goin’ somewhere?”

“Just a bit of scouting out the area. Shane says there’s another group not far from here. Be a good idea to—”

“With Shane?”

The question, or something about his tone, makes Rick look up. “Yes. With Shane.”

“Take it he’s stickin’ around, then.”

It’s the closest anyone’s come to asking about it outright. “He is,” Rick says. He wants to ask if that’s a problem, but something stops him. Something tense and worrisome about Daryl’s posture, not at all like him; even staring down hordes of walkers, it’s a rare thing to see him so on edge. Rick asks instead, “What’s on your mind?”

“Just figurin’ where things stand. You mind if I tag along?”

“What?”

Daryl shrugs, with another glance towards the truck. One of the prison’s rusted, whining doors opens, and there are voices from up the incline; Carl and Shane saying their goodbyes for the day, Shane promising things’ll be alright, saying he’ll bring something—Rick can’t hear what—back safe.

Rick lowers his voice. “If there’s something you need to talk to me about—”

But there’s no time. Daryl’s gaze jumps over his shoulder, unreadable as always, and a moment later Shane joins them, yawning.

“I tell you, man, this ‘no coffee’ thing is kicking my ass,” he says. “Still ain’t used to it. We good to go?”

Daryl doesn’t move. After all the months they’ve spent together on the road, Rick knows well enough to trust him, even if he doesn’t understand exactly what’s going on.

“Change of plans,” he says. “Daryl’s joining us.”

Shane he looks between them. “Ain’t really a three man job.”

“Didn’t say it was.” Daryl opens the back door of the truck and swinging his crossbow inside. “Sick of being cooped up ‘round here.”

He climbs into the truck, pulls the door shut at his back with a slam. Rick catches a confused look from Shane and winces, but there’s no chance for discussing it. He’s digging the keys out of his pocket when Shane puts out a hand.

“Hershel says not to let you drive.”

“What?”

“Sorry, man. Ain’t even me this time. Doctor’s orders.”

Rick isn’t sure whether or not he believes it. They used to compete over driving the same way they’d compete over the radio, and in that eternal battle, neither of them was above the occasional white lie. All the same he holds out the keys, but when Shane goes to take them, he hesitates, curls his fingers, holding them.

“Did you tell Hershel where we’re going?”

“Sure did.”

“And where is that?” Rick asks. “You still haven’t told me the name of the place.”

Shane produces the folded-up map from his pocket. “Marked it out on there, too. See for yourself.”

They trade off—map for keys—and Rick reluctantly circles around to the passenger side of the truck, unfolding the map as he goes. His gaze skips first to the faded mark around _Senoia_ before finding the newer one, a bold red sharpie circle around a little town in Meriwether county: _Woodbury_.

 

**:::**

 

The drive takes them south, along a road lined with old churches and rusted out pick-ups, dirt driveways and dead vineyards. Daryl sits in the back seat, worrying a stick of birch wood into an arrow with the blade of a pocket knife, heedless of the jolting and jostling of the uneven road. Five minutes in, flakes of wood cover the floor.

“Woodbury,” Rick reads aloud, to break the silence. “How long were you there?”

Shane stares straight out at the road. “Not too long. Month, maybe. Month and a half.”

“What are they like?”

“Shoot first, questions never type. Same as anyone else, nowadays.”

“Reckon so?” Daryl asks, from the backseat. A few more flecks of wood fly up, fall.

“You sure now is the best time to be doing that?” Rick says. “We hit a pothole, your hand could slip.”

“’s fine,” Daryl says, right around the time they hit a pothole. His hand doesn’t slip. Then, “Figure it’s better to ask a coupla questions first, ‘fore you go off shootin’ people. Maybe that’s just me.”

“Maybe.” Shane’s tone is light enough, but he throws an accusing glance over at Rick. “You going to pick all that up back there, Daryl?”

Daryl makes a noise that might be either a yes or a no. Silence descends again.

They stop at a bend about two miles from their destination, move it off the road and leave it with the doors locked where it will seem to any passerbys like another part of the abandoned landscape. Shane indicates an incline off to the southeast that will give them a decent vantage point, and Daryl sets off, leading the way through the forest without glancing back to check he’s being followed.

Shane stands watching him go. “What’d you suppose all this is about?” he asks in an undertone.

“It’s just his way,” Rick says, although he’s been wondering the same thing.

“Apparently his way don’t involve soap. Remind me to keep the windows rolled down on the way back.”

He catches Rick’s eye and gives him a sideways grin, as if they’re sharing some private joke—for a traitorous, off-balance second, Rick has to stop himself from smiling back.

 

**:::**

 

The incline is steeper than they anticipated. Rick shifts around the heavy binocular case he carries so it doesn’t brush the bruised patch on his side, but it keeps swinging back. He’s glad Hershel’s not around to comment. Around midday the ground levels out, and a while afterwards, turning south, they break out of the trees onto a ridge overlooking Woodbury.

Based on Shane’s sparse hints, Rick’s braced to see a military camp, dingy and grim and full of gravel, but Woodbury is white and green, an array of perfect two-stories with wrap-around porches and manicured lawns. A wall of tires filched from semi-trucks circles the whole thing, reinforced here and there with stretches of metal sheeting. A few blotchy green-gold magnolias. Streets. A gate, set far back in the wall, calls to mind some sturdy medieval castle.

They’re too far away to make out much detail, even with the binoculars, but Rick sees motion on the wall, someone pacing, and to be on the safe side he steps behind a tree as he passes the binoculars off to Shane.

Shane looks—fifteen seconds, maybe less—says, “About how it was before,” and hands the binoculars over to Daryl.

“Anything different, you can tell?” Rick asks.

“Few more cars than I remember. Hard to tell—it was a while ago.” He lets out a long breath, seems to be making an effort to relax his shoulders. “Hey—you figure this here’s an apple tree?”

“It got apples on it?” Daryl asks, intent on the binoculars. “Usually a good way to tell.”

 He misses the look Shane shoots at his back—ignores the one Rick gives him straight on.

“Forgot you were such a master woodsman,” Shane mutters.

The tree does have apples on it—dry and brown and only vaguely recognizable as such. Shane sets about tugging down the branches, searching for ones not pockmarked with worm holes. Rick falls back, joins him while Daryl looks out at Woodbury.

“Anything else you can tell me about these people?” Rick asks in an undertone.

Shane examines a promising-looking apple, finds a worm, tosses it to the ground. “Ain’t much to tell. What’d you want to know?”

“How many people?”

“Seventy or so, last I saw. But they got the resources to bring more people in. Could be more by now.”

“When did you leave?”

“Middle of June, near as I can figure. Took about a month to find the farm again, like I said. After that…”

He trails off. After that he spent four months travelling with Merle. Rick registers a quick internal flinch at the thought, and glances at Daryl, who’s alternating now between the binoculars and squinting bare-eyed out at the town with a hand raised against the sun.

“They’re a little too close for comfort,” he says, still speaking mostly to Shane. “Could run into each other by accident on a supply run. Might be best to see about introducing ourselves sooner rather than later.”

Shane has found an apple with no holes, and digs out his pocket knife. “What, bring over a pound cake and some flowers, make nice with the new neighbors?”

“Think that’d be problem?”

“How’d you feel if a bunch of guys rolled up the prison to _introduce themselves_?” Shane asks. “I told you, man, they’re not the kind to take chances.”

“You hiding something about this?”

Caught off-guard, Shane doesn’t quite check his sharp, startled up-glance. Then his expression shutters closed.

“Answering your questions, ain’t I? Told you I didn’t hang around too long. What the hell else you want to know? Who takes sugar in their coffee?” The blade of his knife crunches into the apple, loud. “You want to come over here, Daryl, so you can eavesdrop better?”

“Can hear just fine,” Daryl says, keeping his back turned. He lowers the binoculars holding them out. “They got a tank tucked away by the west gate. These guys military?”

“Wasn’t there when I left,” is all Shane says, as Rick takes the binoculars and peers through them. Sure enough, there it is: a tank, almost hidden behind a spray of brushy oleander.

“Looks like someone shot it up pretty good,” Daryl says. “Got a few bullet holes on the side.”

Shane scoffs. “No way you can see _bullet holes_ from up here.”

“It might be shadows,” Rick says, though in truth he sees what Daryl’s noticed, and it looks like bullet holes to him, too. He lowers the binoculars, rubs at his eyes. The light through them is giving him a headache and the whole thing—the perfect green lawns, Shane’s half-answers and Daryl’s strange mood—is making him edgy. The woods have been too quiet, and the town below is too still, and too close. If it’s possible for them to pick out details from this distance, it’s not so unthinkable that someone might look up from below, towards the ridge…

“Let’s call it,” he says. “We’ll see if there’s anywhere to check for supplies on the way back. Passed a few cars heading out here. Might see about siphoning off some fuel.”

He turns to go; Daryl takes a small, subtle step in front of him, holding out a hand. _Wait_. Rick is about to ask what’s wrong when he gets it. Daryl’s watching Shane, waiting until he snaps the blade of the pocketknife closed and starts off down the incline ahead of them before stepping aside to allow Rick to follow.

It puts a sudden cold, tight sensation in Rick’s chest.

The whole way back to the truck he tries to catch Daryl’s eye, to puzzle out some hint, something that will make this all make sense. But Daryl just focuses on the earth between their feet, the spaces between the trees around them, and doesn’t look at Rick once.

 

**:::**

 

They stop at a few places along the road to check for any supplies, with no luck. A tiny gas station that looks like someone went over it shelf-by-shelf for crumbs. Rick supposes someone did. When he catches a flash of his reflection in a mirror behind the register, his nerves are so frayed he nearly raises his gun on it.

In the car he makes a few attempts at conversation, which one by one flare and sink. No, Shane says, he’s not sure if those look like storm clouds. Yeah, he likes Woodbury’s idea of reinforcing their walls with tires. Yeah, it’d be good to do something about the walkers along the fence before they bend the chainlink. Daryl says nothing. Underneath the electrical tape, the steering wheel is split and cracked. Shane unwinds the tape nearly all the way, wraps it around again, repeats the process. He doesn’t seem aware he’s doing it.

When they reach the prison, Carl’s waiting for them. He doesn’t act worried, but he wouldn’t be waiting if he wasn’t.

“How was it?” he asks.

“Saw what we needed to see,” Rick says, with a glance over at the truck. Daryl gathering up his stuff in quick, jerky movements, still not making eye contact. A small window of opportunity. Rick adjusts the brim of Carl’s hat, which has fallen down in front of his eyes. “You had lunch yet?”

“I was waiting for you.”

“You and Shane go get started. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

Carl’s expression brightens, but Shane seems to know he’s being gotten rid of. He tenses up like he’s thinking of making something out of it, but Carl’s already asking him about the day, and in the end he lets himself be led off without protest, throwing one fast, annoyed look back at Rick as he goes.

Daryl moves to head towards the prison. Rick holds out a hand. “I need a word with you.”

From the watchtower, Beth calls down a greeting, and Rick waves back, but she’s too far away to overhear any conversation. Daryl tugs his crossbow more firmly over his shoulder and stands there saying nothing.

“What was all that back there?” Rick asks. And, getting no answer, he presses, “You have a problem with Shane that I need to know about?”

“Don’t need to know about nothing,” Daryl says and starts towards the prison again.

Rick follows him up the incline. “You don’t want to tell me, that’s fine,” he says. “But I don’t want this turning into a fight. I can’t watch the two of you twenty-four hours a day.”

“Don’t need a babysitter.”

“Seemed like you did today,” Rick says. Daryl gives him a sharp look, and he softens his tone. “I’m not choosing sides. You’re my friend, same as Shane. But you can’t go on acting like that.”

“Actin’ like _what_?”

“Like you think I’ve got to watch my back around him. Like you don’t trust him.”

“I don’t. Ain’t my problem if you do. You want to get yourself killed, you go right ahead.”

He lengthens his stride and Rick doesn’t bother trying to keep pace with him. The word ‘killed’ gives him a small, irrational skip of panic and he tries to think—to remember any detail, anything, that could’ve been a tip-off about Merle. He draws the gun from his belt, makes a point of checking it over for any marking. For the words, _Property of Merle Dixon_ scratched into the bottom. There isn’t, of course; no mark even looks deliberate, just a few scuffs. More likely Daryl’s just noticed there’s _something_ they’re not telling him—he’s always been perceptive—but, unable to guess what, is on alert for any possible cause. Inevitably that sense of unspecified disquiet tugged his attention towards the only unfamiliar thing in their midst: Shane. There’s no way he could know the real, awful truth. No way of guessing a thing like that.

Rick presses a hand to his mouth. Now’s the last chance he’ll ever have at that conversation. The last chance he’ll have to go after Daryl and say, _There’s something I need to talk to you about. It isn’t going to be easy to hear._ If he keeps his silence any longer, another day, it’ll become impossible. He _has_ to. It’s the right thing to do. The only thing to do. No excuse he’ll ever come up with will justify it if he doesn’t.

_It would just hurt him if he knew, wouldn’t it?_

After dinner, Rick goes to the armoury anyway and trades out Merle Dixon’s Glock for another. Sleeker and newer, without any scuffs.

 

**:::**

 

 

The only other person who says anything is Hershel.

“I take it Shane’s staying,” he says as they’re washing up from breakfast the next morning. Simple as that, no pretext. Rick—caught off-guard, still working over the continuing strangeness from Daryl—doesn’t mask his expression in time, and Hershel reads it with a sweep of his gaze. He nods. “I guessed as much. Good to have an answer outright all the same.”

Rick scrubs hard at a pan, fingers stiff with the icy water. “I know you don’t agree it’s the right call—”

“It isn’t my call to make.”

It’s the closest he’ll come to saying he thinks it’s stupid, and Rick knows it.

“If it’s any consolation, Daryl thinks I’m an idiot, too.”

“You’re many things, Rick, but not an idiot.” Hershel swipes a dry cloth around the edge of a glass and sets it aside and draws in a slow breath. “There is something I’d like to ask you, while we’re on the subject.”

“What is it?”

“Last we spoke on the subject, you were adamant Shane wasn’t staying. What changed your mind?”

It’s a good question. Rick’s not sure he has an answer, or at least not one he can explain, not if he tries every day for the rest of his life. 

“We’ve been friends since we were kids,” he says after a while. “Best friends, really.” All the playground drama of kids trying to get everyone to declare their best friends, and he used to try to be diplomatic with it, would list off about five names until someone snapped, _But who’s your_ first _best friend? You can only have_ one _first best friend,_ and then he’d pick Shane, without hesitation, every time. “However long things have been the way they are now, we were friends for longer. I have to believe that counts for something.” Catching Hershel’s eye, he adds more sensibly, “I know: the world’s different. Nothing’s the way it was. Maybe I’m being—I don’t know, naive—”

“Hope isn’t always such a bad thing.”

“I didn’t think you’d see it that way.”

Blink of shadow through the window—a bird, or someone walking past outside.

“I don’t blame hope for what happened with my barn,” Hershel says, after a moment. “I blame myself for that.”

Rick looks back down. “You’re not the only one to blame.”

“I am. I don’t know what would have happened if you’d spoken to me more plainly. I like to imagine I would have listened, but I don’t know.”

In spite of the nature of the conversation, Rick finds himself smiling. “Is that what’s bothering you? You’re not sure I’ll listen to you if you speak plainly now?”

“We’re both stubborn men, Rick.”

“I’ll listen. Speak your mind.”

Hershel’s expression thaws a notch or two. “When I thought about the barn, before—I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I knew. Not at first, but as time went on. I knew they weren’t people. That there was never going to be a cure. I knew that, and I didn’t say it. Hope may have started the whole thing, but it was my pride that kept it going.” He says it without flinching. “If you say you trust Shane, I’ll follow your lead. But take it from someone who knows: if you’re having second thoughts, Rick, it’s better to trust _that_ than to be wrong.”

Rick stares down at the pan, at a stubborn patch of grease which won’t be scrubbed clean. They finish the dishes in silence.

 

**:::**

 

There’s no way to put off unpacking any longer. Rick knows he _has_ been putting it off; some part of him still doesn’t expect this to work. Any minute, something could go wrong, and they’d have to get out—grab what they can carry and go. But when he passes Carl’s cell and sees everything still in bags, not so much as a sock out of place, he realizes the next step is on him. It’s one thing to talk all day about how safe this place is, another to start acting like it.

He doesn’t have much to unpack, which is a good thing, because there’s not much space in the cell. He lines up his clothes on the single overhead shelf, spreads out the extra supplies he’s been carrying—can opener, flashlight, extra fuel for the lantern, pliers, rope. The broken Colt Python. He knows there’s not much chance of fixing it, but throwing it out is unthinkable. He fetches an extra gun from the armoury and tapes it to the underside of the cot. There’s a suspicious stain on the underside of the mattress. It wouldn’t hurt, one of these days, to see about finding a town with a furniture store, haul some of the standard prison-issue mess out and replace it.

He’s reaching into the bag to check there’s nothing he’s forgotten when his fingers brush cold metal. He almost jerks back his hand, manages to curb the instinct at the last second. The hall beyond the cell is empty, but Rick waits, watching the shadows to be sure no one passes by—and then, as slowly and carefully as if he’s handling broken glass, he draws out the badges.

One from his uniform, and one from the hat that now belongs to Carl. _King County Sheriff._ Seven points each. He put them away a while ago, at Hershel’s farm, and he’s done his best not to think of them since. Once, on the road, Lori had been searching for something in his bag and when Rick looked back at her she was stuffing them back beneath a pair of socks, trying to do it before he noticed. He’d never mentioned it to her. They were packed light, only the essentials—no photo albums—but somehow amidst the panic of leaving the farm, Lori must have grabbed those. Why? It’s another question Rick will never get to ask her. He sits turning the badges in the light, trying to find some answer in the scratched metal, something that will make it all make sense.

He can’t help wondering if there’s a badge buried somewhere in the depths of Shane’s overcrowded bag, too—or if that, of all things, might have been the one thing Shane would have gotten rid of.

They had no idea what they were doing after high school. Rick had planned to stay with his parents for a summer while he got his bearings and figured out the next step, but he’d abandoned that plan in the middle of the night—a decision he’d never regretted once, no matter what followed—and instead he’d wound up sharing an apartment he could barely afford with Shane, a pair of full-time minimum wage jobs between them and no clear plan and no time for sitting back and figuring it out. After two months of that, panic was starting to set in.

And with his own unique, unerringly bad sense of timing, that was right around the time Shane’s dad had showed up.

Mr. Walsh had dressed nicely for checking out what he called ‘the new digs.’ New jeans, new flannel shirt that, like all shirts, seemed to barely fit over his shoulders. He even kicked some of the dirt off his tennis shoes before stepping inside. He liked the couch, he said. The wallpaper wasn’t good—made the whole place look kind of faggy—but what could you do about that, with these pussy ass landlords breathing down your neck nowadays? Anyway. It wasn’t too bad, he said.

Then he told them he had some news: he’d talked to his supervisors and pulled some strings and managed to guarantee two jobs if they wanted them. “I told ‘em you were both my kids—Good as, right?” he’d said, and clapped Rick on the shoulder. Mr. Walsh was under the impression that his job as a long-distance truck driver was the target of envy for what he called ‘nine-to-fivers’, a detestable group he warned they were at risk of falling into if they kept on the way they were going. He painted a pretty picture of the job: much better than minimum wage, and he got to see the country, it was never the same thing twice, and a lot of the time there’d be multiple trucks assigned to the same route. The three of them, he’d said, could request those, travel together. It’d be like a road trip. Making money while they were at it. He’d show them all his favorite places along the way.

He invited them to a bar to talk about it. When Rick pointed out they were under age and Shane suggested a restaurant instead, Mr. Walsh suddenly remembered he had an important delivery to make, and he ought to get back on the road, throwing one last, _Think about that job offer_ , back over his shoulder as he went.

They were picking at lunch meat sandwiches over dinner a few days later when Shane revealed he _had_ been thinking about it. It was a guarantee, at least, he’d said, staring at his plate. Maybe they’d give it a shot for a year, save up enough so they wouldn’t need to get such a crap apartment whenever they got back. Rick, at the edge of his patience for the subject already, had made a comment about the various things he would rather do than be on the road with Mr. Walsh for a year, and the conversation started to sour.

 _“It’s a decent job,”_ Shane said, a little stiffly. “Just because _your_ dad—”

“I wasn’t saying that.”

“We can’t _all_ be cops, Rick.”

Back then, they were so tuned-in to each other they rarely fought; they both knew when to let a silence rest. Rick leaned back against the arm of the ancient couch they’d pulled out of a free pile on the sidewalk and tried to think of any way out of this—Shane was right, after all. It _was_ a decent job.

When it hit him, his breath caught in his chest.

“Why can’t we?” he said. “Be cops, I mean. What’s stopping us? When we were kids, seems like that was all we ever wanted to do. You used to wear that uniform for Halloween every year—”

“That was kid stuff, man.” Shane picked a bit of discarded crust off Rick’s plate and held it up. “You know you’re missing out on the best part when you do this.”

Rick’s his mind was running on ahead of him. “There’s no reason we couldn’t. I mean it. What’s _one_ reason why not?”

“You being serious?”

“We get jobs as truck drivers like your dad says, we’re going to go weeks without even seeing each other. We’ll turn out like everyone else from high school, promising they’re going to be friends forever, but all they ever do is send Christmas cards. And don’t say we won’t, because that’s what everyone says, and then it happens anyway. And what about when we both have families? When would we even—” He could barely talk fast enough to get out half of what he was thinking, already seeing. Had to force himself to slow down. “But if we do this, we could be partners. Be working together, watching each other’s backs. Make a real difference, while we’re at it. I know you’re going to say it’s just me wanting to play hero, but—It’s not like I’m saying we go off and become _astronauts_ , for god’s sake—”

Shane stood abruptly, paced the length of the room once. When he turned back to Rick there was a strange expression on his face, and they’d looked at each other in the long seconds that followed as if seeing each other for the first time.

The badges gleam dully in his hand, the grey light from the prison’s high windows catching on whatever polish they still have. Rick turns them over again, still not sure what he’s looking for. Some trace of magic still caught in the metal, maybe. Something that will leave him wanting to _Make a real difference_ again.

In the end he tucks them back into his bag.

 

**:::**

 

“What are you thinking?”

It’s a cool, clear evening, the last orange slants of sunlight lighting up the treetops like fire. A warm breeze from the west. It feels more like late summer than mid-November. Carl sits holding onto the watchtower railing, swinging his legs off the side, his face curious under the shadow of his hat.

Rick asks, “What makes you think I’m thinking?”

“Dad.”

“Plenty of people don’t think.” He ignores Carl’s eye roll—ignores, too, that it’s the kind of overtly lame joke his own dad would have made, once upon a time. “I was just remembering those cookouts we used to go to when you were a kid,” he says, after a while. “Every Fourth of July, the whole neighborhood was grilling something. Your mom used to make that godawful potato salad. You remember that?”

“Yeah.”

“Every year, I thought you were going to set yourself on fire with one of those sparklers.”

“I was careful.”

“I know you were careful. I spent the whole time watching you, anyway.”

“If we find some of those sparklers somewhere, can I have them?”

“We’ll see.”

“You let me have a _gun_.”

“We’ll see,” Rick repeats, though the answer’s yes, and they both know it. He leans back against the railing and lets out a deep breath. “I thought I’d never miss those parties. They weren’t so bad. Lots of people. Most everyone getting along. Plenty of good food. Some song playing over the radio. It was just—normal. If you’d asked me a month ago, I’d have said we’d never get another shot at a day like that ever again. Now…”

He looks around. It’s not easy to picture them setting up a grill in the prison yard, cooking up something Daryl wrangled out of the woods, but the thought makes him smile.

“This must be the place,” Carl says.

Rick looks at him in surprise. “Yeah,” he says after a moment. “I think so.”

Carl gives him a patented exasperated teenager _look_. “It’s a _song_ , Dad” he says. “The one that was playing the other day. _This Must Be the Place._ Glenn says it’s by Talking Heads. If we’re going to play something on the radio—I liked that one.”

Ah. “You kids today and your newfangled music,” Rick mutters, and this time the imitation of his father is intentional. “And here I thought you were being profound.”

“What’s ‘profound’?”

“You need to be reading more. It means meaningful. Deep. Like poetry.”

“Oh.”

 “Some Patsy Cline would have killed you?”

“Who’s Patsy Cline?”

“You’re _trying_ to antagonize me now.”

Carl just grins back, as if he’s just landed a clever joke and Rick’s reaction is the punchline. It’s not a habit he learned from either of his parents, but he learned it somewhere.

From across the yard Rick hears a faint thread of conversation, floating back across the evening air: Hershel’s voice, Beth’s laughter, Maggie exclaiming something in mock-outrage, a pair of happy, girlish shrieks. The sky is turning a deep, plummy shade of purple, the first stars lighting it in pinpricks.

Rick has spent the last few weeks trying to avoid this moment, knowing how dangerous it is. But dangerous or not, there it is: the clear sense, beyond any doubt, that things are going to be alright.

 

**:::**

 

Glenn and T-Dog get back from their first supply run earlier than expected. Rick, who’s been trying not to pace, rushes out at the sound of the car with Carl in tow. Shane’s already handled the gate for the car to pass through, is throwing it shut against the usual eager crowd of walkers. Rick pauses, Carl rushing past him, and watches long enough to make sure there are no unexpected problems—there aren’t, and he hurries on before Shane can sense his gaze and look up.

The trunk is open when he reaches the car, Glenn and T-Dog standing beside it, and Carl’s already digging into one of the totes. “Whoa!” he says, tugging out a stack of comics. “Batman! Dad, check it out—”

He launches an explanation about issue numbers and plot lines as Rick joins him at the trunk. He sees what’s there and something in him does a swift, unpleasant plunge.

“This is all the food you found?”

T-Dog winces. “Everything was pretty well picked over.”

Rick takes it in at a glance. Not anywhere near what they need, even for a couple of weeks. On the road, if they didn’t find supplies in one town, there was always another; here, they can’t be driving out for hours every day. If there’s nothing nearby, and with the heart of winter coming up fast…

“What kind of town was it?” he asks, as Shane joins them. “How many buildings, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” Glenn says. “A lot, I guess? It was pretty good-sized. We checked the grocery stores, gas stations…”

“Were there walkers?”

“A few. I mean, there’s always walkers.”

“Did you check any houses? Pantries? Root cellars?”

Glenn falters. Carl has stopped examining his comics and is looking between them, brow furrowed.

“It’s different out there when it’s just two of us,” T-Dog says. “We didn’t want to run into anything we couldn’t handle. Tough to look in all those little places and watch your back at the same time.”

“Maybe we oughtta take a few more people out next time,” Shane puts in. “Check it all, make sure there ain’t something we missed. Hey—what’ve you got there?” He indicates the comics, and just like that Carl’s right back to where he was, fanning out the issues and explaining some complicated plot involving the Riddler.

Rick grabs a few totes from the trunk, manages to catch Glenn’s eye. “You did good. Thank you,” but the gratitude seems to come a little too late. Glenn looks away from him, expression withdrawn—already planning what do different on the next supply run. It gives Rick a fast guilty twinge, and he tries to soften his tone. “Maggie’ll want to see you. The two of you go get washed up for dinner. I can handle this from here.”

He takes the totes into the kitchen, his mind buzzing; as he kneels to unpack them, he feels the first small, definite grain of panic, and has to work hard to fight it down. There’s a chance combing through every house in that town will yield better results, but if someone else has already scavenged so thoroughly through the stores, the odds aren’t good they left the houses untouched. And T-Dog was right; houses are a bigger risk. More places for things to hide, more unexpected corners, a thousand more opportunities for something to go wrong. And taking out more people means less room in the car to store supplies if they are lucky enough to find them; less room means more trips, means more wasted gas, means more trips…

And they have no time to guess and test and perfect their methods. It’ll be December in a few weeks.

There are footsteps in the hallway, a long, familiar stride. Rick already knows who it is before Shane says, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Rick echoes, distracted. He hears Shane moving into the room—senses, without turning to look, that he’s hanging back, hesitating near the shelves. Then all at once he bursts into motion again, bringing over a few tote bags and setting them down, unloading them in a quick series of efficient, cheerful movements.

“Bet I know what you’re thinking,” he says.

Rick abandons his effort at focus, looks up.“What’s that?”

“Right about now?” He picks up a can of stewed tomatoes, gives it a shake, and tosses it in a high arc. Rick catches it on a flinch. “You’re wishing Deb’s Burger Pit was still around.”

It’s so unexpected Rick can’t help but smile, reflexively. He sets the stewed tomatoes aside on a shelf and says, “I’d still have to pass on that.”

“Sure, man. You loved that place and you know it.”

“I think you’re getting senile in your old age.”

“Bullshit. Every time we drove by, you’d put up this big commotion, start yelling at me to pull the car over right away—”

“That was _after_ we ate at Deb’s Burger Pit,” Rick mutters, and turns back to unloading the totes.

Shane says, “Hey—we still got time to figure it out before the winter. Alright? Maybe next time the two’ve us go out and have a look around. You’re just about healed up, ain’t you? We’ll both feel better if we get out and do something. Better than sitting around here feelin’ useless.” He pauses. “Unless you figure _Daryl’s_ gonna want to tag along again.”

“As a matter of fact, I think he might.”

“What the _hell_ is all that about, anyway?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Shane lowers his voice to a joking whisper. “Reckon he’s jealous?”

Before he can catch himself, Rick laughs. “Of what?”

Shane’s expression shutters closed. He gets to his feet, brushing off his hands. Rick adjusts a jar of peanut butter on the shelf.

“Are there any more totes in the car?”

“One or two,” Shane says. “I’ll go grab ‘em.”

But he doesn’t go, just by the door, and after a moment, Rick hears him take a deep breath. “Listen, man, I ain’t looking to start anything, but you might want to watch how much you talk about the supplies situation in front of Carl. He’s worried about all this shit.”

“We’re all worried,” Rick says. “Carl’s heard plenty worse.”

“Other day in the library, I caught him flipping through a book about the Donner Party. Told him to put it away before he gave himself nightmares.”

Rick glances up sharply. “Did he say anything to you about it?”

“Just that he was curious, is all. Asked if it really happened. People having to eat each other because there was nothing else to eat. Told him it did, but it was a long time ago, not to think about it. I don’t know. What the hell do you say to a thing like that?”

Rick passes a hand through his hair; there’s a lot of points he could choose to address there, not the least of which being that he’d prefer to handle these types of conversations with Carl himself. It doesn’t seem worth the argument, not right now.

“Carl knows the way things are,” he says. “There wasn’t much food on the road, with, and we all talked about it plenty in front of him. You don’t need to worry about him.”

Silence. Shane lingers a moment more, as if waiting for something—when it becomes apparent there isn’t going to be anything, he says something about the totes again and sets off, footsteps receding down the hallway. Rick leans his head again the cool metal of the shelf, eyes closed tight. He pulls a deep breath into his lungs and holds it, lets it go slowly.

It’ll get better.

 

**:::**

 

He’s on shift in the watchtower after dinner, and he’s never been so grateful for it. It’s a cool, clear evening, the stars and moon bright against the black sky. No clutter of streetlights and distant business signs all lit up— _Open twenty-four hours! Unbeatable prices! Save today!_ There’s something restful about it, something that makes thinking easier, and Rick needs that. Before dinner, he spent a while in the rec room with the state map spread out in front of him, and it comes back to him now. A handful of options, places to check for supplies. They’ll work from the shortest distance to the longest, try to hit more than one town in a day if they can, do it fast and scheduled until they find something. He works through a dozen _What ifs_ and worst case scenarios, tells himself they don’t need to survive like this forever, only until spring, when they can start planting crops… They’ve been through worse. They’ll be alright.

Footsteps on the stairs almost startle him. He leans over and switches on the lantern and checks his watch—still running, probably one of the only things in the world that is anymore—and is surprised to find his shift has elapsed already. He gets to his feet just as Glenn draws the door open and steps inside.

“Maggie joining you tonight?”

“Later, yeah.” Glenn swings his backpack off his shoulder—extra gun, bedroll, a small pillow tucked in tight. “T-Dog found some cards and chips today. Everyone was playing poker when I left.”

“I don’t mind staying on shift if you want to go—”

“Nah, I’m good.”

“Poker?” Rick repeats.

“Better than cable.”

“Hershel winning?”

“Hershel went to bed about an hour ago. Up until then, yeah, he was kicking everyone’s ass.” He says it lightly enough, but there’s a reason Glenn’s not too keen on sticking around to play poker: his expression always gives him away. There’s something there, now, something that makes Rick pause with his hand on the doorknob.

“You alright?”

Glenn shrugs. “T-Dog found some whiskey, earlier today. Everyone’s having a glass. As like a treat, you know? I had a sip of it. I’m not—I mean, I’m not drunk, or anything, but…”

“You don’t like letting your guard down like that.”

“Yeah. I’m barely buzzed and I wish it would wear the hell off already. I keep thinking, ‘What if something happens?’”

“I’ll stay with you out here, if you want. Until you sober up.”

“I’m basically sober now. I don’t know what it is, exactly. It just bugs me.” Glenn shakes his head. “I guess we’ve all got PTSD. I just thought… You know, that it was just about being on the road for so long. And once we found some place like this…”

“It’ll take some adjusting,” Rick says. “We’re safe here.”

“We thought we were safe at the farm, too.” He looks up, quickly, as if his own words have startled him. “Not—I’m not saying that was your fault, or anything.”

They both know it was. Rick glances back at the prison, or what he can see of it—the faint, crooked line of stars where the sky ends and the roof begins, and for all the worst case scenarios he’s considered tonight, he’s never entertained the thought that something might happen to this place. When he tries, it’s like his mind runs into a brick wall, an impossibility. It’s nothing to do with the fences, or the lack of a barn full of walkers, or anything about it, just a simple, straightforward conviction that he isn’t going to let anything happen here.

He knows it’s irrational. This world is running feral. It revels in the worst case scenario, tears apart every glimmer of certainty and safety with the gleeful viciousness of a child tearing into birthday presents, and it doesn’t give a damn about the most desperate vows or promises or oaths. Rick knows that, and yet it’s as if the thought has dropped into his head out of the clear dark sky, and won’t be shaken: _Not here. Here is different._

He doesn’t mention any of this to Glenn, just says, “Get some fresh air. You’ll feel better soon.”

He steps out onto the balcony and makes it two steps down before the door opens again and Glenn calls him back.

“Rick?”

He pauses. “Yeah?”

“That supply run today…”

“You did fine. Thank you for going out like that, risking your necks. I’m sorry if it seemed like I was—”

“It’s not that.”

“Everything went alright?”

Glenn is silent for a moment. The lantern light is at his back, making it impossible to read his expression, but after a moment, he nods, and his voice brightens. “Sorry. It’s nothing. We’re all good. You should get some sleep.”

Rick hesitates on the steps; a quick, intuitive twinge of unease tugs at him, and he almost doubles back and presses the issue, but the door is already falling shut again as Glenn turns away. They all have plenty on their minds nowadays, Rick supposes, and sometimes it’s more merciful not to pry. Maybe a few hours alone with his thoughts will help Glenn work out whatever it is that’s bothering him, and if not—Rick resolves to ask him about it in the morning, to give him a second opportunity to mention whatever it was, if he needs to.

It’s a short walk back to prison through the cool dark. The creaking metal doors and smell of stone and dust are starting to feel familiar. The path back to Cellblock C leads past the kitchens and cafeteria, and rounding a corner, Rick pauses—the hallway outside of the cafeteria’s swinging doors is hazy with the dim yellow-orange of lantern light, and there are voices just beyond the door, laughter, a low warm murmur of conversation. The poker game Glenn mentioned. Watching the light flicker with shadows and hearing the faint clink of glasses, Rick has the impression of the scene playing out behind the door as a small, insulated bubble of warmth, one he would be trespassing upon.

His step slows, then speeds. But he isn’t quick enough. Just as he reaches the door Maggie steps out, almost walks into him. They both start—Maggie recovers first, letting out a breath of relief.

“Sorry—” The long shadow of her arm skims the wall as she brushes her hair back out of her face. “We were starting to think you must’ve gone right to bed. Glenn tell you we’re playing poker?”

“He did. He said Hershel stole everyone’s money.”

Maggie laughs. She isn’t wearing her boots, just a pair of fresh socks—likely one of the few finds from today’s supply run—and her color is high. Glenn may have stopped at a sip of whiskey, but not everyone did.

“Well, Shane’s, mostly,” she says. “Rest of us know better than to—”

From the room at her back, T-Dog’s voice, “Is that Rick out there?”

“He is.”

“Well, tell him to get in _here_ —”

“I think I’ll just get to bed,” Rick says, beginning to edge past, already conjuring up an excuse about a headache.

Maggie puts out a hand. “You won’t join us, just for a round or two?” She moves a step back across the threshold, saying something about how they haven’t had a chance to relax like this in ages, and as she does Rick catches a glimpse of the room at her back. Someone has dragged in one of the small round tables from the rec room, and it’s cluttered with glasses, chips, cards. Mismatched chairs crowded in a circle around it. Carl is there, talking to Beth, but at the motion from the door he turns away from her and she turns instead to Daryl, who’s tipping his chair back and doesn’t look interested in the conversation. Carl peers around Shane’s shoulder, towards the door, grins as he catches sight of Rick.

Rick wavers another moment, but between Carl’s hopeful glance and Maggie’s invitation, there doesn’t seem to be a way out of it. He lets himself be drawn into the room. 

“Shane’s teaching me to play poker,” Carl says, when Rick reaches the table.

“Is he?”

The game is momentarily on a break, but looks to have been going on for a while. The air has a trace of human warmth and smells of something smokey and sweet—whiskey.

“The basics,” Shane says. He’s tapping poker chips into neat towers, his back to Rick, and he doesn’t look up. “Kid’s a natural. Figure all that’s left is a few practice games and he’ll be as good as Hershel.”

“Hershel kicked ass tonight,” Carl reports. Shane nudges his chair with the toe of one boot.

“Hey—Don’t say ‘ass.’”

“Well, he did.”

Shane doesn’t argue the point. To Rick, he says, “Got the sense I was being hustled.”

Hershel used to play in his drinking days, a fact they’d all found out one night at the farm when Andrea had located a deck of cards and suggested a game to pass the time. Hershel had, in classic manner, seemed to flounder at first, then suddenly won hand after hand, blank-faced and neat and merciless. Shane would have known better than to play against him, if he’d been there that night.

Rick is about to say this—or some of it, at least—but T-Dog is at his shoulder, holding out a glass of whiskey. “Here,” he says. “Might not have found too much today, but at least there’s this.”

Rick shakes his head. “It’ll be wasted on me. I’m going to bed—”

“You’re not staying?” Carl asks.

“One for the road then?” T-Dog presses. “This’ll probably be gone by morning. Don’t know the next time we’ll find anything like this. Seems like the first place people hit when the world ends is the liquor stores.”

Rick takes the glass and holds it without drinking it, because it seems easier. After so long, the smell hits him as something dark and indulgent, borderline debaucherous; and the table, in its haze of lamplight, like some barroom prop. He looks at Carl again. “Is Hershel with Judith?”

“She’s asleep.”

So that’s a _no_. “You ought to be, too.”

Carl’s smile falters. “Dad—”

“You already should’ve been in bed hours ago,” Rick says. “Hasn’t Shane taught you to quit while you’re ahead?”

Carl makes a show of sighing loudly as he slides out of his chair and mutters a goodnight to Shane, but the lack of his usual protest seems to be a sign that he really _is_ tired. He seems to take some of the ease out of the room with him.

“Reckon you’ll be hearing more about that in the morning,” Shane says.

Rick looks at him—watches the lamplight play over the high curve of his cheek and wonders if it’s worth the argument to say this was something he ought to have been consulted about. He’s not sure how well he likes Carl staying up so late, with everyone around him drinking.

But before he can try, Daryl, across the table, says, “You ain’t gonna drink that, I will.”

“He’s drinking it,” Shane says, before Rick can say he’s not. “How about you slow down a little, Daryl?”

Daryl stops tipping back in his chair, lets the legs fall forward and hit the floor with a small _crack_. “How about you mind your own damn business?”

Shane ignores this; he indicates the chair Carl vacated next to him, nudges it out from the table with the toe of his boot. “Could use another player.”

“Yeah,” T-Dog says. “You joining us, Rick?”

Rick is about to say no, he’s not—he’s thinking of what Glenn was saying in the watchtower, about letting his guard down—and then he falters. He’s aware everyone at the table is waiting for his answer—Maggie pausing in the middle of gathering up cards—and he feels just as he thought he would, standing out in the hall: like an intruder, stepping in on the happy atmosphere of the room and tracking mud all over it and stepping out again.

“Just for a hand or two,” he says at last.

T-Dog raises his glass in a quick toast. Maggie sets about shuffling the cards she’s holding; she’s teaching Beth how to make a bridge.

“You remember how to play?” Shane asks, and Rick forces a smile—he could make a joke out of it, but he doesn’t have the energy. When he takes his seat, their legs brush under the crowded table.

Maggie deals, saying, “Daryl was just telling us about a cousin of his who made a living hustling poker,” and Daryl rejoins the story, speaking in fragments about a cousin who never got a job, just went town to town, had more money than anyone working a nine-to-five, stopped in from time to time if he needed a place to rest or to buy crack whenever Merle was able to get ahold of it. Rick gathers up his cards from the table, makes it through a distracted betting round, disenchanted by the story. With the cafeteria door shut at his back and the narrow pool of lantern light, the room seems small and closed, trapped. Rick tries to shift in his seat, hyper aware of how close he is to Shane. But there’s nowhere to go without crowding into T-Dog’s space, so he tries instead to ignore it as he would ignore sitting next to a stranger on a crowded bus.

He won’t stay longer than twenty minutes, he decides. It’s enough time to be friendly. After that he’ll make an excuse about a headache. He takes a large sip of his drink to hurry it down, but it catches in his throat, and he coughs. It’s not watered down at all, and has a sharp, straightforward, almost medicinal burn, like rubbing alcohol. Cheap stuff.

“You alright?” Shane asks.

“ _Fine_.” He aims for brusque, but misses the mark, still coughing. Next to him he feels Shane raise a hand, on instinct, as if to pat his back—then he hesitates, his hand dropping without ever making contact. Rick takes a second sip to calm the first, and sets the glass pointedly aside.

The first round goes to Daryl—the second, too. He’s talking more than usual, barely glancing at his cards. The story about his cousin has veered into one about Merle: some complicated drama involving criminal trespassing, a slushie machine, and jail time. Rick looks at his cards and forgets them almost immediately, sees only the bright blood red points of a diamond, and loses the third hand as well.

“—weren’t one of them tabletop ones, neither,” Daryl’s saying. “Industry-size ones. So we already got the breakin’ in part done, seems like a waste to just head outta there without takin’ anything. Between the slushie machine and a dollar bill in the register.”

“A dollar bill?” Beth repeats.

“Just the one. All crumpled up and shit like a big ‘ole middle finger to anyone dumb enough to break in. And after we spent all that time hatchettin’ in two doors—”

“What did you think you were going to find?”

“Dunno. Gatorade. Whatever kinda shit they keep in concession stands. Merle wanted to break into somethin’.”

He tells them how they’d managed to drag and shuffle the slushie machine out to their dad’s pickup truck and heaved it into the back, Merle cussing up a storm the whole time. Maggie holds up a hand with a quick glance at Beth to keep him from giving a demonstration.

“Then Merle figures we got a better shot at gettin’ away with it if it don’t look like there’s been a break in. Says if there’s any cameras, mosta ‘em don’t keep the recording more than three days. So now we gotta cover up the doors we broke in, ‘case a cop rolls by.” He squints at his cards, sets them on the table. “I’m out. Anyway. So guess who’s gotta handle that?”

“You?”

“Merle takes the truck back home and I stay back tryin’ to fix up the door, make it look like it ain’t been broken in—”

“Wow,” Shane says. “Shaping up to be yet _another_ great Merle story. One for the books, man.”

Daryl ignores him, goes on about the door and the slushie machine and the truck and the field all lit up with red and blue lights. Rick loses another hand. He can’t muster any sense of disappointment. He’ll stay another ten minutes—less. Five. His excuse about a headache is half true now, anyway. The effort of keeping from flinching at Merle’s name has him sitting rigidly, shoulders tight.

Maggie is shuffling again when a thin noise reaches them—wavering and pitchy, like wind whining at the cracks of the building. It takes a moment before Rick realizes what it is: Judith’s crying, rendered strange and eerie by the prison’s winding acoustics. He’s about to take the excuse to get up from the table and go to check on her and Carl when it quiets down again.

Beth says, “I think she’s settling in real well. She likes it here.”

Rick doesn’t know what to say to that. It hasn’t occurred to him to wonder how Judith feels about the prison. He reaches for his drink again, and sees Shane reach for his at the same time.

He’ll make it through another _two_ minutes. People can think what they want. But when he knocks back the rest of his drink, T-Dog takes the glass from him and fills it again, over his protests.

“If you don’t want it,” Beth says, “you mind passing that my way?” She smiles so sweetly that for an unthinking moment, Rick almost does, a knee-jerk reaction. He catches himself.

“You crazy?” Maggie asks. “You want Dad to kill me?”

Beth raises her eyebrows. “I don’t get what all the big _deal’s_ about. It’s not like I’m breaking the law.”

“Law was there for a reason,” Rick says.

Shane laughs. “Ain’t like you and me never bent the rules a time or two at that age. He talks a good game, Beth, but you oughtta seen him, night after high school graduation—”

Rick cuts across, a little loudly, “We don’t need to get into that right now.”

The ripple of laughter around the table almost surprises him. Rick tries to smile, pretending he took it as a joke, and he feels Shane shifting next to him, trying to pretend he took it as one.

“How about I can try some if I win the next round?” Beth says.

Maggie seems about to refuse—then, glancing up, taking in the mood of the table, she sighs. “Alright,” she says, sharp enough to make it sound like a threat. “If you win, you can try a sip. _One_ sip.”

By an unlikely stroke of luck, Beth _does_ win—everyone but Maggie and Rick fold, and Beth’s two pair is better than either of their hands. She beams as Maggie reluctantly slides a glass across the table, and to her credit, she covers her wince well enough.

“Worth it?” Rick asks, and Beth’s nod is so strained that he has to duck his head to hide a smile.

As Maggie’s gathering up cards from around the table, shuffling them back into a deck, Shane says, “People don’t drink it for the taste,” and when he passes over his cards, Rick catches a glimpse of the folded hand—a straight, five through nine.

Rick starts to get to his feet, to a round of protest from around the table.

He shakes his head. “It’s been a long day.”

“You _just_ got here,” T-Dog says. 

“Let him go, man.” Shane sits up straighter. “He always does this. Knows he’s going to lose and bails out early.”

“I leave early because I don’t want to humiliate you,” Rick says, but the teasing catches at him unexpectedly—it has less to do with any actual concern with losing than it does with the oddity of the moment. He can’t remember the last time he had an exchange with Shane that was anything other than tense and awkward.

It wouldn’t be enough to get him to stay, but when he hesitates a second too long, his hands on the back of the chair, another round of protests starts up, and this time he lets himself be convinced—another hand or two, he says, sinking back into his seat. Shane gives him an unexpected grin—a mischievous _Gotcha!_ grin, and Rick finds himself returning it in spite of himself.

“He came back looking for me, though,” Daryl says.

Everyone turns to him, confused.

“What?”

“Merle. That whole business with the slushie machine. Probably wouldn’t have even got arrested if he hadn’t come back lookin for me.”

“You still on about that?” Shane asks, but Daryl only sips his drink, and doesn’t answer.

 

**:::**

 

The conversation comes easier as the night runs on, eased by the softening warmth of the whiskey. They talk about the prison, about cleaning it up, getting new furniture; the possibility of finding a chicken, somewhere, and building a coop out in the yard. Hershel had said something about planting crops. They’ve all been so tired lately that these discussions are usually approached with dread or exhaustion, but tonight there’s a building energy, and for the first time Rick feels as if they’re all seeing the prison not as it is, but as it could be: clean, well-furnished, safe, plentiful. Looking around the table and seeing a tentative excited glimmer building around him, he has an echo of the feeling he’d had a few days ago with Carl in the watchtower, that somehow—by some impossible, astonishing miracle—they’ve managed to stumble into exactly the right place.

“Don’t know shit about planting crops,” Daryl says.

“I figure Hershel will handle most of it.” Rick glances at his cards, raises. “He’ll point us in the right direction.”

Daryl shrugs. “Hershel was saying he used to have help around his place, from Otis.”

“We’ll see about checking libraries next time we in town. Grab a few farming guides.”

“Dad won’t be able to carry on too much about us ruining our hands,” Maggie says, aside, to Beth. They both laugh, and start off on a story, talking over each other, about picking dirt from under their fingernails when they were kids, Hershel going on about calluses, showing them his hands… Rick takes another sip of his drink and is surprised to find it almost empty again.

“It was like that old anti-drug commercial, you remember that? ‘These are your hands…’”

“And _these_ are your hands on farming—Ooh, sorry—!” Maggie has gestured a little too wide and clipped T-Dog’s shoulder with her elbow, to a burst of laughter from around the table. There’s something surprisingly funny about Maggie asking, wide-eyed, if he’s alright, T-Dog insisting he is, Maggie holding back an abashed smile as she devolves into a chant of “I’m _so_ sorry,” and goes in for a hug, T-Dog patting her back and laughing.

“It’s fine—I’m fine, seriously, don’t worry—Who’s turn is it?”

They all pause, looking around the table, which seems suddenly more jumbled and chaotic than it did a moment ago. The game is beginning to unravel at the edges, half-forgotten amidst the conversation and laughter.

“Shane’s,” Daryl says.

Shane sits up, tosses a few chips into the pile and leans across the table to collect the whiskey bottle. He pours himself another glass, tops off Rick’s in spite of his protests—in spite of Glenn’s words ringing in his head, If something happens… The game moves on and he finds himself sipping it anyway. For the first time in as long as he can remember he doesn’t feel tense and exhausted—there’s a pleasant dizziness starting in his head.

The night moves on—time performs a small leap, all of them getting lost in conversation again, and Rick realizes another several hands have passed. T-Dog is telling them he never used to play any card games much, except for a time he’d wound up trapped in the midst of a two-day power outage with some friends, and cards were all they had to keep themselves occupied. Got pretty competitive, as the second night wore on and it turned into a game of strip poker. He was down to his boxers before he managed to turn it around with a decent hand. Somehow he’d still wound up wearing his then-girlfriend’s skirt, either way.

“Had some liquor involved that night, too,” he adds, unnecessarily.

Rick smiles. “Reminds me of some of those poker games we used to get into with the guys after work.”

T-Dog nearly chokes on a sip of whiskey, manages to recover. “Bunch of _cops_ sitting around playing strip poker?”

“No—” Rick’s own laugh catches him off-guard as he realizes how it must have sounded, a few seconds too late. “ _Competitive_ , is what I meant.”

“I think the whiskey’s catching up with you.”

“Might be.” It is. Any sense of worry about it is too far away, too small to matter. He turns to Shane. “You remember that?”

Shane has a hand in his hair, tugging at the roots. The question seems to startle him.

“What?”

“Every other Thursday. Four dollar burger night.”

Shane blinks—drops his hand away with a grin. “Almost forgot about that.”

“Leon Bassett going all in on a bad hand, every time—”

“He’d start betting weird shit when he got to the end of it. Still had his Costo card, somewhere in my wallet.”

“Had to convince him about once a night that no one wanted his socks.”

T-Dog says, “So it _was_ strip poker—”

“Only if you asked Leon,” Rick says. For a brief, almost-drunken moment, it’s as if he can smell that bar: the fried food and cheap beer, waft of the waitress’s perfume—classic Chanel No. 5—the wood polish they used on the tables and the bar. There’d be some rerun of a game playing on the television, everyone talking over each other, someone in the corner laughing, loud and helpless. The memory gives him a quick, distant pang, somewhere behind his ribs.

“Wonder whatever happened to him,” Shane says.

“Who?”

“Leon.”

Rick doesn’t mean to answer—but there’s something unnatural about his silence, and he feels Shane tense next to him, getting it.

“Ran into him,” Rick says, “when I went back to the station, to grab those guns.”

A flicker of silence—the laughter around the table has died. Shane considers this, then raises his glass. “To Leon, then.”

The toast goes around the table. Not one Rick thought he’d ever be drinking, in Leon Bassett’s memory—but it makes his throat feel unexpectedly tight, and he’s relieved when Shane, lowering his glass, says, “Tell us more about you wearing a skirt, T.”

T-Dog returns to the story, saying something about understanding why Scotsmen wore kilts. Rick is aware of Shane’s hand on the back of his chair, and it seems deliberate, a quick reassurance which, earlier in the evening, might have made Rick shift away from him again. Instead the intensity of his own reaction surprises him—a lightening of the heart, a rush of affection—and when he glances over and catches Shane’s eye, they trade smiles easily for the first time in as long as he can remember.

“Did Hershel ever wear a kilt?” T-Dog is asking, and Maggie swats at his arm, on purpose this time.

“We’re _Irish_ —”

“Don’t Irish people—”

“How much time you spend thinking about Hershel in a kilt, man?” Shane asks, reaching for the whiskey bottle across the table.

“I’m only saying! Maybe the next supply run we go on, if we find something in my size—”

“Shh.” Across the table, Daryl isn’t lounging anymore. He’s sitting up, spine straight, a hand raised for silence. The clatter of conversation around the table grinds to a halt. They all sit frozen mid-word, while Daryl turns his head to the side, listening.

Rick waits as long as he can before asking, “What is it?”

Daryl just shakes his head. T-Dog answers for him. “Daryl thinks we might have rats.”

Shane stifles a laugh, downs his fresh glass of whiskey like a shot.

“Don’t know what we got,” Daryl says. Neither the brief flare of conversation nor the laugh has broken his concentration, and for another long moment he stays still as a hunting dog. The silence around the table is complete. It’s a windless night, any distant sound sound muffled by the prison’s thick concrete wall. And yet they sit all the same, listening to nothing, nothing…

“Real spooky,” Shane says, flicking a poker chip into the center of the table. “I’ll raise ten.”

The moment breaks. Motion around the table resumes, on a relieved exhale. Daryl relaxes back into his chair, though not quite into the same loose sprawl as before. “Quiets down every time we do,” he says, reaching for his drink again.

No one says anything. Trying to keep his face free of any trace of skepticism—there’s nothing Daryl hates more than not being taken seriously—Rick makes an effort at focusing on the cards in his hand; three sevens. Not bad. He raises. As the betting goes around the table, he says, “There were all those rat traps in storage. We could lay a few of them out. Better safe than sorry, with supplies the way they are.”

“Already tried that,” Daryl says. “Put a few in the corners back in the pantry. ‘Nother couple in the vents. Nothin’ so far.”

“Ain’t that awful smart for rats?” Shane asks.

“Smarter’n usual. Like I said. Might not be rats.”

Beth says, “Maybe there’s an axe murderer living in the walls,” and when Maggie exclaims something quick and reprimanding, she adds, a touch defensively, “It was on a documentary!”

It’s a good thing, Rick thinks, that Carl’s not here. “There are no murderers living in the walls,” he says. 

“Just supergenius rats.” At some point, Shane refilled his glass again, and he raises it in Daryl’s direction, another quick toast. Daryl sits with his glass raised, to hide his mouth, but doesn’t drink.

Another betting round passes around the table—Shane raises again, and Rick copies him, though two new cards doesn’t improve his hand at all—while Beth clamors to explain that no, it really did happen, there was this family in Germany, six people were murdered with an axe and it was never solved but investigators used to think there was someone else living in the house and the family didn’t know it until they came out one night—“Ow!”

Maggie has pinched her arm. “That’s morbid.”

“Sounds like ghost stories we used to tell around the campfire when I was a kid,” T-Dog says. “Punch line was usually someone screaming.”

Beth lets out a frustrated breath. “It really _did_ —”

“Half the time them traps don’t work anyway,” Daryl says.

It takes Rick a moment to understand what he’s talking about. He looks up to see Daryl looking across the table, his gaze on Shane, steady and unblinking.

“Don’t they?” Shane asks. “You seen a lot of rats in your day, Daryl?”

“What’d you mean?”

“Just wondering how you know so much about ‘em. Hell, way you talk, sounds like you’re an expert.”

There’s a tiny, sharp silence.

“Let’s not get into that now,” Rick says. He lifts his glass—a distraction—not wanting the whiskey, but recklessly drinking it down anyway, beginning to feel sick as a result.

“Expert on rats?” Daryl repeats.

Shane is turning a poker chip between his fingers, quick and casual. “Sure. You have ‘em around growing up?”

Daryl sets his cards down.

Rick thinks belatedly of kicking Shane’s foot under the table, of whispering a reprimand. There’s no point to it now. All he can think to say is, “Let’s call it a night. I forgot whose turn it is.”

A small exhale from around the table. T-Dog rises out of his chair, looking relieved. “You and me both—”

Daryl says, “Possums. Didn’t have rats growin’ up. Just possums.” He’s sitting very still, could be mistaken for calm. “They’d get in the trash at night. They’d eat whatever wasn’t beer cans—sometimes they’d eat those, too. When I was a kid I used to sneak out to play with ‘em. Weren’t nothing else to play with. Couldn’t turn on the lights, ‘cause if my dad saw a possum he’d string it up and we’d have it for dinner the next night, no matter how much I hollered. That’s what you were gettin’ at, ain’t it? You reckon anyone here was figurin’ I grew up in a goddamn suburb?”

No one moves or blinks or breathes.

“Heard possum tastes like chicken,” Shane says.

Beth shoves her chair back from the table, mutters something about needing the bathroom. She hurries off. Maggie follows, not meet anyone’s eyes. In their absence the room is tight with hard, bitten-down tension. Rick knows—knows—there’s something he needs to do or say next, but he can’t think what it is. He can’t seem to pick out one sticky thought from another.

In the end, T-Dog clears his throat. “It’s late,” he says. “I think we probably all had too much to—”

Daryl’s chair scrapes back from the table, a massive sound against the silence. He tosses down his cards, mutters something creative, and heads off—on some notion of following him, Rick stands as well, but when he does, the floor doesn’t seem to be where it should be.

Shane’s already on his feet next to him, catching hold of his arm. “Whoa—you good?”

Rick jerks away. “I’m fine.”

The room around him looks suddenly foreign, and not friendly at all. He can’t remember why he imagined this would be a good idea. Glenn’s voice spins around in his head— _What if something happens…_

He collects himself enough to mutter something about a glass of water. In the kitchen, his perception skips; he doesn’t remember getting a glass down from the cabinet, or filling it, but it’s in his hand. Chairs scrape the floor in the room at his back. A low murmur—T-Dog saying something, Shane answering, silence. Rick stays braced over the sink, breathing hard and throwing all his mental weight into focusing, thinking clearly, as if by some force of will he can think himself sober. His distorted reflection in the scratched stainless steel sink gazes back at him like some blurry, miserable stranger. His thoughts veer off in an unexpected direction: to the soup pot full of bones, where it had sat just to his right. To the conversation in the pantry today. _People having to eat each other because there wasn’t anything else to eat…_

A soft sound somewhere behind him. Hs pulse leaps, sickeningly, into his throat. Rats. But he turns, and it’s not rats. Shane has followed him into the kitchen, is standing there less than two paces away.

“You sure you’re alright?”

Rick swallows hard. The taste of whiskey lingering in his throat has turned sharp and bitter. He’s about to lie, to insist he’s fine, but then he’s saying instead, “Why did you do that? Why did you say all that to Daryl?”

Something in Shane’s expression shifts.

“Two of you got pretty friendly, huh?” he says.

Nothing about the night makes sense anymore. Rick stands holding the edge of the sink for balance, feeling as if this is all some complicated movie he’s started watching in the middle and can’t get the drift of. He sets down the glass on the counter, a too-loud noise. He doesn’t want to spend any more time trying to figure it out.

He manages to mutter something about bed. Shane steps into the doorway, barring his path. “Hey—”

“At least he’s been here.”

“What?”

Rick shakes his head, side steps.

Shane puts out a hand, starts to say something else something—Rick jerks away from the touch so fast he nearly loses his balance.

“Damn it, Rick, will you just _listen_ to me—”

“I’ve heard enough.”

He brushes past and doesn’t look back. Halfway down the hall he hears something in the kitchen break with a massive crash, and his step doesn’t slow.

But by the time he reaches Cellblock C his anger has burned out and he just feels cold and sick and miserably tired. The edges of the door to Carl’s cell are dark, the light out, and Rick is glad of it, though the dark is momentarily disorienting and he has to lean against the wall to get his bearings like a man trying to stand upright on the swaying deck of a ship.

His perception skips again. He’s in his cell dragging off his clothes and rubbing distractedly at his arm. Cold points there where Shane’s fingers had been warm. In the dark he imagines he can feel the touch again and the jolt in his stomach isn’t entirely nausea. But the impression is all tangled up, too much to try to make sense of and the next moment he’s only thinking that he’s never been so grateful for the flat, thin mattress in his cell.

The room seems to dip dizzily to one side. It feels as if he’s been fed poison. He closes his eyes and keeps them shut tight, a mad, futuristic nightmare playing out behind them—cards, amber glasses throwing back lantern light, something small and clawed scuttling through the dark spaces in the walls.

Somewhere deep in the prison, faint and faraway enough that it comes to him more as a sensation than a sound, a door closes.

 

**:::**

 

_“What the hell kind of question is that?”_

It was a house party, the only sort of party they went to anymore. A coworker’s birthday, but his wife had put together both the party and the house, and everything was subdued and beige and smelling faintly of lavender, soft jazz piano playing over the stereo. The atmosphere was nonetheless devolving into one of cozy intimacy, mostly thanks to the wine and champagne. Officer Pérez—Rick couldn’t think of her as Sara, not even now—had kicked off her heels and was curled up in an armchair opposite him, grinning like a girl at a slumber party.

“A _good_ question,” she said. “ _You_ picked truth—”

“This game got a hell of a lot more boring since we were in high school,” Shane said, aside, and Rick smiled back, trying not to imagine the games of truth or dare Shane had reportedly gotten into in high school.

Pérez huffed a put-on sigh into the glass of wine she was holding. “You picked truth,” she said again. “Like a _girl_. C’mon, it’s an easy one. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

“You want to waste your question on _that_?”

“C’mon, you tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine. And that’s not even in the _rules_.”

“This game’s got rules now?” Shane asked, and Pérez sunk a further in her chair and aimed a light kick at him with one stockinged toe. Shane caught hold of her ankle and gave it a tug, and Pérez nearly lost her balance with a round of high, startled laughter and the two devolved into a round of feigned, aimless argument.

Rick had the impression he would be driving himself home, and seeing Shane sometime _tomorrow._ He wondered—as he had been wondering all evening—how soon he could slip away without being considered impolite. He had passed up a night with Lori for this. His watch read near ten, which meant everything in town would be closing up for the night. Was it too late to call, invite her out for a short walk—? Even if she said no, he wanted to hear her voice, to tell her what a mistake the party had been, how he’d wished the whole time he was with her instead… In the end he decided it was too late. She was most likely asleep by now. He’d call her in the morning, and see if she would meet him for lunch.

It didn’t help to remind himself they would be moving into their new apartment together at the end of the week. There didn’t seem to be enough hours in a day, in a year, in a lifetime, to see as much of her as he wanted.

“Grimes, help me out.” Pérez was sitting up, straightening out her dress, making an effort at composure. Her dark hair was in chaos, staticy clumps of curls, and she was flushed and grinning and out of breath. “Tell your partner to hurry up and answer already.”

Rick hazarded a glance over at Shane, trapped, not knowing what to say—he was no good at these things, at playing wingman. But he must have looked just miserable enough that Shane laughed and raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. “Alright, alright—Ran over a squirrel once. Feel awful about it. You satisfied?”

Pérez pulled a face. “Boo! That is not—”

“You don’t feel worse about stealing my prom date?” Rick asked.

There was a playful, admonishing _Oooh_ from a few people who’d been standing close enough to eavesdrop, and Pérez clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide in mock horror. Shane flashed a grin, a wink, and the diversion launched them into a winding story about that, to rounds of laughter and sympathy, and the game was mostly forgotten, or moved on to daring one another to fetch desserts from the kitchen.

Rick made his excuses to leave fifteen minutes later. It took him by surprise when Shane followed him.

Shouldering open the sticky door to their shared apartment, Rick said, “I didn’t think you’d be coming back here tonight.”

“Why not?”

Rick threw him a _look_ , and after a moment, Shane gave up the ruse with a laugh, running a hand over the back of his neck.

“I dunno, man. Might’ve made work weird.”

All the flirting was bound to make work weird, too, but Rick decided not to comment on it. He knew an excuse when he heard one, even if he couldn’t work out the reason for it. He nudged aside a moving box full of clothes—you never realized how many clothes you had until you had to take them somewhere—and hung up his jacket. By the time he’d turned around, Shane was already sprawled out on the couch.

“Are you going to sleep there?”

“Might as well.”

“I didn’t think you had that much to drink.”

Shane didn’t answer. He had an arm flung over his eyes like a fainted southern belle, a dramatic and somehow infinitely endearing pose, and Rick registered a sharp, swift pang: he would miss this. No matter how eager he was to move in with Lori, some part of him would always be snagged here, like a shirt sleeve upon a protruding nail.

He thought about saying some of this; in the end he decided against it. Instead he went and stood at the end of the couch where Shane had propped his feet on the armrest, and leaned over to undo the laces of his boots. Tug and yield and snap of string. He looked up and found Shane had raised his arm from one eye and was regarding him steadily.

“What?”

“Just thinking what a great wife you’ll make some lucky man one day,” Shane said. “Lori know what she’s getting herself into?”

“She’s got a rough idea. What was the real answer to that question?”

“What question?”

“You know what question. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” He waited, tugging off one loosened boot, then the other. “More importantly—when’s the last time you bought a new pair of socks?”

“These’re new. Got them last week.”

“There’s a hole in the heel. The way you stomp around—”

“Leave my socks alone.”

“I’m serious, you know. The way you dodged that question back there—you’ve got me curious.”

“There any beer in the fridge?”

Rick went to check, returned to the couch with a pair of beers, waved a hand for Shane to make room and sat next to him.

“I think she really likes you. Pérez.”

“You figure?” Shane’s grin said he already knew the answer. He always did.

“Why wouldn’t she?”

Shane reclined over the armrest again, and seemed to consider it—but there was something distant in his face, and Rick sensed he was thinking of an answer to that other, more pressing question: _What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?_ It wouldn’t pay to press the silence, so Rick let it rest, sipping at the beer he didn’t really want—but as the silence went on, grew, it became unnatural. Shane didn’t usually take this long choosing his words.

For a distraction, Rick glanced around—and found one. The light on the answering machine was blinking. Probably a telemarketer. Still, it sent a quick, fine thrill all the way through him, right down to the tips of his fingers, and without thinking he leaned over and pressed play.

The message had been left at five-past-ten. Lori’s voice, the half-a-tone-sweeter inflection she used only on the phone: _Hey. I know it’s late, you’re probably in bed already. Just wanted to say I’m thinking about you. Call me if you want to do lunch or something tomorrow. Goodnight, love._

Shane pretended to gag. Rick cast around for something to throw at him and settled on a paper coaster, which did nothing, and swatted at him instead until he stopped, laughing, and got to his feet.

“God, man, you’re one’ve _those_ couples.”

“Where are you going?”

“Bed don’t sound half bad after all. Figure you’re going to be out here all night replaying that damn thing.” Shane let out a short huff of a breath. “ _‘Just wanted to say I’m thinking of you.’_ Jesus. That there’s the real thing, ain’t it?”

“I reckon so.”

Shane paused somewhere behind the couch. When Rick looked up, he’d just finished chugging his beer, was crushing the can and depositing it into the trash with a shake of his head.

“See, I _was_ gonna tell you how bad I felt about all that business with Holly,” he said, “but I reckon all that there just cured me of the guilt. Next thing up’s probably still that damn squirrel, if you were curious.”

Rick rolled his eyes. He knew that wasn’t the real answer, but in truth he _did_ want to replay the voicemail. He waited until the door to Shane’s bedroom clicked closed, made himself comfortable on the couch, stretched out the cord on the answering machine until he could hold it in the crook of his arm. He turned down the speaker volume and lay there smiling with his eyes closed and Lori’s voice in his ears until he was too tired to press the play button again. _Goodnight, love._

 

**:::**

 

The sheets are cold and empty next to him when he wakes. For one blessed moment it doesn’t make sense. But when Rick reaches out his fingers touch concrete and he remembers where he is, and the grief is like being gut-punched, leaves him stunned and breathless and nauseous. He draws in slow breaths through gritted teeth, waiting in the dark for the feeling to pass.

It doesn’t. If anything, the nausea builds. Worse—there’s a slow, repetitive pulse of pain right in the center of his forehead, getting worse by the beat. Minutes pass before he understands why. Taste of whiskey at the back of his throat. But the realization has no bite, the night before still weirdly out of reach. A muddle of impressions, cards, laughter.

When it’s clear he won’t be able to get back to sleep, he sits up, moving slow and careful. He holds himself rigidly at the edge of the bed. His stomach does a series of sour lurches. The light in the cell is dim and cold, just before dawn, and the prison is silent. Near the corner of the cell, yesterday’s clothes lie where he left them in a misshapen lump of shadows—Rick can just make out the sleeve of his shirt, tugged inside out and crumpled up, and the toe of one overturned boot.

The nausea passes in grudging increments, enough that he can stand and go to the little sink inside the cell and brush his teeth and wash his face with icy, rust-smelling water. It helps, or he convinces himself it does. He braces himself and kneels to pick his clothes out of the pile on the floor, but they’re tangled and rumpled beyond hope, and when he picks up his shirt there’s a smell on the sleeve, the dark, rich smell of whiskey, and he has to stop, his stomach turning over again. His memory does a quick slipside. And then gradually—gradually but relentlessly, like bloated corpses surfacing in murky water—last night comes back to him.

He remembers watching Beth sip Maggie’s drink. He remembers drinking a toast to Leon Basset. Remembers something about rats, remembers a thread of conversation about their after work games, remembers laughing, remembers nearly losing his footing when he stood, in front of everyone—and, for some reason, worst of all, he remembers the cluttered, cramped warmth as they all struggled to find room at the small table, the heat of Shane’s leg pressed against his.

All at once it seems there’s not enough air in the whole building.

He pulls on fresh clothes in a rush and makes it out to the courtyard. The first lungful of fresh morning air is like sliding into a pool of still, cool water. The yard beyond is just lightening to dawn, and the shadows in the alcove where he stands are still thick and dark in the corners. Rick braces his hands on his knees and draws in a few more deep, grateful breaths, and feels some of the miserable tension ease out of his shoulders—until one of the shadows shifts.

His hand is at the place on his hip where his gun should be before he registers what it is—only Daryl, half sitting, half leaning upon a narrow ledge on the courtyard’s inner wall where concrete meets chain link. Rick swears under his breath.

“Mornin’ to you, too,” Daryl mutters. He’s focused on something on the ledge, but glances up long enough to assess, “You look like shit.”

Rick manages a noncommittal noise, heart still going too fast, too miserable to take offense. The surprise has caught him right in the stomach. He swallows hard, and when he trusts himself to speak, he says, “Glenn still in the watchtower?”

“Maggie’s out there with him. Don’t reckon they’re doin’ much _watching_ anything.”

“Is that what you’re doing out here?”

Daryl doesn’t answer. Whatever he’s looking at on the ledge has captured his attention again. Rick follows his gaze, and in the half light he can just make out what it is: the thin, worn paper of the state map.

“What are you looking for?” Rick asks.

“Didn’t steal it from Shane, that’s what you’re wonderin’. Just lyin’ out in the rec room. Figured it was up for grabs.”

“I left it there—I was planning out our next supply run,” Rick says. Daryl still doesn’t look up, and the shadows make it impossible to read his expression. Still, Rick feels it like a faint static crackle in the air, the same small, intuitive warning prickle he used to get at work, the same thing that must have saved him a thousand times out on the road: _Something’s wrong_.

He straightens up, edges a step closer. “But that’s not what you’re using it for, is it?”

Daryl doesn’t answer right away. “Just figurin’ where things are.”

“Things?”

“Yeah.”

“What ‘things’?”

“The farm,” Daryl says, after another moment. “Closer than you’d think. Spent most’ve that time on the road just runnin’ circles ‘round the highways. Went the wrong direction for a while. Just kept missin’ this place.”

“We made it in the end,” Rick says. But that’s not what Daryl is getting at. They both know it.

He goes over and stands beside the ledge, where Daryl has the map flattened out. It’s furred at the creases and flimsy with overuse, but in the dark it’s still possible to make out the small dot reading _W. GA. Correctional Facility_ , and the red sharpie circle around _Senoia_. Daryl’s right: it’s not far at all. Closer than Woodbury, even.

Daryl says, “Thinkin’ of taking a drive out there, having a look around.”

“For what?”

“Anything. Won’t know ‘til I see it.”

Rick considers the map a moment more. “I’ll go with you,” he decides. “Not today—afraid I won’t be much good in this condition. When are you thinking?”

“Sometime in spring. Figured I’d go alone.”

It’s a day trip, and the weather’s good enough for it now. It only becomes a _Wait until spring_ trip if it’s going to take longer than it should. Much longer.

Rick lifts the map off the ledge, folding it carefully, and Daryl doesn’t protest. The sun’s rising, and in the yard beyond the alcove the grass is beaded with thousands of droplets of dew, the sweet wet green smell of it rising at it warms. It all feels unreal and glassy, hangover-tinged, right on the edge between enchanting and sinister. Rick spends a moment looking out, getting his words in order.

“I owe you an apology,” he says at last. “All that last night—I should’ve put a stop to it.”

“All _what_ last night?”

“Shane was being a real jackass to you.”

“Almost like Shane’s a real jackass,” Daryl says flatly.

“I’ll have a word with him.”

“Don’t bother.” Daryl detaches himself from the wall and snatches the map back.

Rick’s breath feels tight in his chest. “Tell me what to do to fix this.”

“Fix _what_?”

“You’re thinking of leaving.”

“Not just thinkin’ on it. We never even went back to the farm, to see what all happened.”

“We know what happened.”

“Lot of guessin’, is all that is. Patricia’s the only one we saw get bit. Everyone else—”

“We know what happened,” Rick says again.

“Don’t even know how them doors got open—”

“All that weight pressing on them. We overfilled the barn. I—” He breaks off uninterrupted, feels Daryl watching him closely and can’t meet his eyes. His head gives a vicious throb. “It was my fault,” he finally gets out. “We all know what happened. There’s not some— _mystery to be solved_ here. We both know that. I’ll have a word with Shane. Whatever’s going on with you two—”

Daryl gives a hard, dismissive snort.

“You’ve been on edge since he showed up and you won’t tell me _why_ —”

“Too late for tellin’ you. Ain’t no point to it.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Means let’s say you pack him a bag and send him on his way, straight to Woodbury. Can’t see him taking too kindly to that. And he knows we ain’t got enough people to hold this place if we’re attacked. Ain’t much we’d do if a tank rolled up here. You send him out there pissed off, ain’t no tellin’ what he’ll do.”

Far off in the woods, a crow sets up a harsh, throaty racket, and Rick nearly jumps again. His heart is going fast, mind racing; there’s too much there to address all at once. Too much, with the headache pounding behind his eyes, to even understand.

“You never had a problem with Shane being around before,” he says.

Daryl looks out at the field.

“Did he say something to you?” Rick presses. And, still getting nothing, “How long have we been together? Watching each other’s backs out there on the road, everything we’ve been through—Now all of a sudden you’re going to leave, just like that, and you won’t even tell me _why?_ ”

Daryl keeps watching the field for a long while—so long Rick wonders if he means to reply at all. The light through the chainlink casts small square shadows over the both of them, segmenting Daryl’s expression, and there are a thousand things Rick could read there, or nothing at all.

Then, “You loan your gun to Otis?”

“What?”

“That night Shane took off,” Daryl says. “You said you loaned your gun to Hershel’s man Otis, before him and Shane went out on that supply run. Ain’t that what you said?”

Rick hesitates, thrown. The conversation has taken a leap from one thing to another without warning, like a needle skipping across a record from one track to the next.

“I did,” he says slowly. It was over a year ago, and the day has receded to an awful haze in his memory—but at one time he’d looked at it closely, picking every moment to shreds, tearing apart every detail looking for the one that would make sense of it all, and he hasn’t forgotten any of the facts. “What’s that have to do with—”

“And what’d Shane say happened to Otis?” Daryl asks. Before Rick can answer, he goes on, “Said they were pinned down, Otis stayed back to cover him, got overrun. But you got your gun back, didn’t you?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Not gettin’ at anything. I’m sayin’ something in that story Shane told you don’t add up. Ain’t no reason to lie ’bout a thing like that, ’less there is.”

“Daryl—”

“Then he up’n takes off in the middle’ve the night, just like that. Didn’t even wait around for your kid to wake up. Can’t tell me you ain’t never wondered _why_.”

Rick had wondered plenty—had done little but wonder about it, and it had taken Lori saying quietly, _Shane and I…_ to get him to stop wondering. It takes him a moment now to understand what Daryl’s saying, but when he does—

“You think Shane—” It seems too ludicrous and explosive to say out loud. He finds himself leaning back against the ledge and gripping the cool concrete to steady himself. “Maybe we’re not understanding what happened. Otis had a rifle, too. He could have—”

“Only one way to find out. ”

Rick fights back the borderline hysterical urge to laugh; he can’t picture sitting down with Shane and having a conversation about that. The idea of talking about anything from _before_ feels dangerous; they’ve both avoided it carefully, as if sensing one wrong word would be like pulling at some small, essential thread and unraveling everything, leaving them with a tangled mess, unable to kit it back together. And even if weren’t off-limits, Rick can’t see a way to talk about _that night_. He remembers Shane throwing himself out of Otis’s truck, a look on his face Rick had never seen before. The hard, fast thrum of his heartbeat when Rick embraced him and the sharp smell of animal fear on his skin. Asking him to relive it would be impossible at best—downright sadistic at worst.

Daryl says, “You wanted to know.”

“We don’t _know_ anything.” Rick shakes his head as if it will help clear the thought away, a lifelong instinct rearing up strong: to give Shane the benefit of the doubt, of _every_ doubt. Daryl’s wrong. Completely wrong. On some fundamental level, underneath all the sharp and dark edges, Shane’s still himself. Battered and cracked, of course, but still the same person Rick has known and trusted since they were kids. “You’ve got something wrong. Things might’ve changed, but he wouldn’t just—he wouldn’t do that. I know he wouldn’t.”

“Bet once upon a time you _knew_ he’d never shack up with your wife, either.”

Rick glances at him, sharply—they’ve never talked about it before. Sure as hell not like that. It takes him a moment to be sure he has his voice under control.

“I don’t want you to leave over this,” he says. “I don’t want you to leave at all. You got a place here, with us. And if you don’t trust Shane, there’s nothing I can do about that. If being around him is all that unbearable for you—But I’m telling you right now: you’re wrong about him. The truth here is you don’t know him at all.”

“You so sure _you_ do?”

Rick holds his gaze without blinking. Daryl stares back.

“We’ll talk about it more later,” Rick says. “We ought to see about fixing breakfast. Glenn and T-Dog found some oatmeal yesterday. I think we’ll all feel better if we have—”

“I’m taking over on watch. You go on and fix your damn oatmeal.”

“Daryl—What do you want me to _do_? I can’t go back and just—”

“If you’d asked before you invited him to stick around, I’d’ve told you what I thought.” Daryl’s shoulder clips his, hard, as he brushes past and throws open the chain link door leading out of the alcove. “Don’t go actin’ like you give such a damn about what I got to say now. And it ain’t just that, anyway.”

“Then what is it?”

Daryl stops, his hand still on the door, eyes narrowed against the rising sun. “We _don’_ t know what happened at the farm,” he says. “You’re probably right—everyone’s dead. Don’t _know_ it, though. World’s gotten a hell of a lot smaller. I figure if you and Shane ran into each other again—”

“Daryl—”

“—and if everyone’s dead, knowing for sure’s better, ain’t it?”

That’s what it is. Daryl isn’t just talking about the people they lost at the farm. Rick sees it on his face: he’s talking about Merle, too.

Rick tries to say something and can’t. His lungs have gone numb, as if injected with a dose of novocain. He can’t force any sound up through his throat at all.

Daryl casts one last glance in his direction—disappointed, angry, or disgusted, it’s hard to tell—and sets off, throwing the door shut behind him and heading out to the watchtower without looking back.

 

**:::**

 

Most everyone’s already awake when Rick heads back inside. Sounds of conversation in Cellblock B. The smell of something warming on the stove. He has to pause in the hallway, waiting for his head to clear, for another kick of nausea to abate. It doesn’t seem completely tied up in the hangover anymore, either—it’s the same inevitable, sinking, sickening sensation he used to get when he was a kid in trouble, caught out playing somewhere he shouldn’t have been, a baseball through a neighbor’s window.

Someone rearranged the tables in the cafeteria. The small one from the rec room is gone, as are the chairs, and the rows are neat again. But something about the room still looks off-kilter. Wrong. Carl’s already there, Judith with him.

“What age can babies handle solid foods?” Carl asks. He’s trying to keep his bowl of oatmeal away from Judith’s persistent, grabbing hands.

Rick mutters, “Not sure _I_ can handle solid foods right now.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Carl glances over at him, and his mouth twists, fighting a smile.

“You’re hungover?”

“I was up too late last night,” Rick says, which he knows is futile. He relents, “And I had too much to drink.”

“You look really sick.”

“I _am_ really sick. You don’t need to worry about it. I’ll have something to eat and I’ll be fine.”

“Shane said something about dog hair.”

Rick feels the abrupt, startled jump of his pulse in his throat, like he missed a step on a flight of stairs. It takes him a second to say, “What’s that?”

“He was up before you.” Carl sweeps his bowl out of Judith’s reach again. “He mentioned dog hair and left. Is that code for something?”

“It’s an old hangover remedy,” Rick says. One Shane hasn’t been stupid enough to try since they were in their twenties.

“Does it work?”

“No.”

Carl shrugs. “I didn’t think he’d have much luck finding a dog, anyway.”

Judith makes another lunge for the oatmeal and manages to grab onto the edge of the bowl. While Carl’s distracted trying to prise off her small fingers, Rick dodges into the kitchen. But the solitude there is only a moment’s relief; the prison’s coming awake, everyone in varying states of dishevelment, drifting in to fetch oatmeal from the stove. Maggie has one of Glenn’s jackets wrapped around her shoulders, and she looks borderline fluish. T-Dog seems to have faired a little better, but keeps screwing up his face, rubbing at his eyes, blinking hard, like he’s trying to peer through a heavy haze. Rick waits for him by the stove; when they’re close enough no one will overhear, he asks, “What happened to the rest of that bottle of whiskey?”

T-Dog gives him a miserable look. “You’re not serious.”

“Just curious.”

“I lost track of it. Left it out on the table last night. There was barely any left. I thought Daryl might have—” He breaks off, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead, and Rick lets it alone.

 

**:::**

 

He can’t manage more than a few bites of breakfast. The oatmeal sticks in his throat, sits in the bowl looking even more bland and unappetizing than usual, and in the end he passes his plate over to Carl, telling him to finish it. Across the table, Hershel has a paperback propped open to read while he eats, and he doesn’t look up from it once—but there’s something about the disapproving set of his mouth which Rick knows is meant for him.

He does the washing up in the kitchen. The glasses from the night before are still there, the edges still sticky, smelling sweetly of whiskey. Rick holds his breath as he handles them. Another slow, swamp-corpse memory rises up in his mind: someone had mentioned Otis last night, the first time in a while anyone had. Daryl. He’d done it subtle enough, hadn’t seemed unnatural about it, but Rick realizes it must have been a test. He must have been watching closely as he did it, eyes on Shane to gauge his reaction. And how _had_ Shane reacted? Rick’s head hurts, trying to remember. There was nothing right away, of course, but that veer in the night towards its end—all that about rat traps and possums—seems even nastier now. It might be nothing at all, a coincidence, unconnected, but…

The thin conversation in the cafeteria has long since faded by the time he finishes scrubbing clean the oatmeal-crusted cooking pot. He steps out into the hall, still drying his hands on the front of his shirt, expecting to find himself alone, and gets his second bad start of the morning: Shane is leaning on one arm against the wall, waiting for him.

“Rough morning?” he asks.

For an absurd, horrorstruck moment, Rick thinks he’s referring to the conversation with Daryl, that Shane somehow overheard the whole thing—it strikes him belatedly the comment is only in reference to his obvious hangover. He recalls in the same moment his conversation with Carl, and takes in Shane’s appearance: he looks better than the rest of them, but there’s something odd about his pose, something too relaxed and not-quite-natural.

“You finished off the whiskey?”

Shane lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Seemed like a waste to throw it out.”

It’s not like him. Rick might ask _What’s wrong?_ He might ask a thousand things. In the end he says, “You didn’t make yourself miserable enough last night?”

“You know your impression of your mother gets sharper every day?” He seems to mean it as a joke, but doesn’t have the energy to put any bounce on it. Smile strained and a fraction late. He reaches into his pocket, produces a small pill bottle and holds it out. “Here. Got a few of these left. Figured you could use them.”

Rick looks at the bottle in his hand and reads the label: aspirin. It looks like a bribe.

“Save it for when we need it.”

“Reckon you need it now.”

Rick shakes his head. He wants to be alone, wants out of this conversation before he asks something he doesn’t want an answer to. _What’s the worst thing you’ve ever—_

He’s about to head off down the hall when Shane straightens up and steps subtly into his path.

“Rick—listen a minute, alright?”

Another bloated corpse—he’d said the same thing the night before, hand on Rick’s arm. And worse—no. Rick decides he won’t remember that. He _won’t_.

Shane’s saying, “I get you’re pissed at me about all that with Carl. And I ain’t trying to—I should have run it by you first.”

“You should have.”

“Won’t happen again. We alright?”

“Daryl’s the one you ought to be apologizing to,” he says.

A flash of something crosses Shane’s face. The wince he gives a moment later is more calculated. “Reckon you’re right about that. I’ll track him down later. Give him the morning to cool down a little, first.”

Rick wonders how that conversation will play out—if it actually takes place at all. He doubts it will.

They stand in silence for a moment. The air between them is tightening up again, too much unsaid. The night before, that disastrous last conversation. Otis. Carl, Daryl, Lori, Judith. There’s too much to say and no way of saying any of it, no way to even start.

Shane holds out the aspirin bottle again, and waits; after only another moment’s hesitation, Rick takes it. Their fingers brush when he does, and pulls his hand quickly away.

“Thank you,” he says, and before either of them can say anything else he sidesteps and sets off down the hall, his pace brisk.

 

**:::**

 

That should be the end of it. The hangover fades and the night, for the most part, isn’t mentioned again. Time skips and pools in the dwindling November days. There are no routines to fall into, no schedules, only the work to be done. Every day they find more. Sweeping up layers of years-old dust. Scrubbing blood stains from the walls. Securing the fences—they talk again about borrowing Woodbury’s idea of stacking up old tires they find. It’ll compromise some of their visibility, but the more they have between them any the rest of the world, the better.

Daryl, for his part, seems to be working hard not to catch anyone’s eye. Rick doesn’t know what to say to fix it. He has until spring to figure it out. As for the rest of it—he resolves not to think any more about their conversation in the courtyard, to put it out of his mind, and for the most part he succeeds.

Most of the time. But as the minutes and hours and days go by, he catches himself thinking about it at all sorts of odd moments. It always surprises him to do so, but he’s able to follow the thought backward, stage by stage, link by line, this idea having called to mind that one, which in turn had been suggested by that… Wherever they start, they all have their finish at the same place: Otis.

Rick does his best to shove these thoughts away when he catches them, and to keep his tone light when he talks to Shane, but the more he tries, the more it begins to feel awkward, contrived. Eventually he gives up.

They pass days trading only a word or two here and there, when it’s unavoidable. The tension between them strung so tight it hums in the silences, sets Rick’s thoughts knocking around at odd angles inside his head, makes his skin feel wrong, the walls too close. During the day he has to leave any room they find themselves together in. At nights he volunteers to stay on watch later than he should, or else finds himself lying awake in bed in the dense stone silence of the prison, the only sound his own breath and heartbeat and the slow _tick, tick_ of the watch on his wrist—which, in the latest, blurry hours of the night, takes a tiny, whispered chant of its own: _Otis, Otis, Otis_.

 

**:::**

 

They’re near the end of the month and he’s plucking a bit of stiff wash from a line strung between the basketball hoops in the prison yard when he looks up and finds Carl standing there, one of the sleek black prison-issue shotguns slung casually over his shoulders. The sight is a bad shock: Rick has seen Shane strike the same pose more times than he can count, and Carl’s imitation of it, whether consciously or not, is picture perfect.

“Is that loaded?”

“No.”

“Keep it that way.”

“Shane said he could teach me how to use it.”

Rick focuses on shaking the wrinkles out a shirt. 

“You said I could have a shotgun if I learned how to fire one,” Carl says. “Remember?”

Of course he remembers what he said; not just to Carl, but to Shane as well. He’d meant it as an olive branch, sitting out here, watching the sunrise and forcing jokes about property values. The reality of it seems like the real joke, like a sneer straight in his face for actually thinking—stupid, naive—that all it would take was a few days of pretending everything was normal and it would be.

“Shotguns are loud,” he says. “I’d feel better if you’d stick with a pistol so you can use the silencer.”

“Dad, you _said_ I could—”

“It’s not a toy, Carl.”

“I _know_. That’s why I want to _learn_ how to _use_ it.”

Rick gives up on folding a shirt, tosses it aside. It’s already stained with blood and dirt and grease and god knows what else—a few wrinkles will only complete the picture. “It’s loud,” he says again. “The fences are secure, but we’re not going to test them. Gunfire’ll attract walkers. You stick with the gun you’ve got and—”

“Shane thought the same thing about the gunfire. He says if it’s alright with you we can drive out in the woods a little ways and find somewhere quiet and set up a target out there. We’ll be careful—”

“Out past the fences.”

Carl lets out a sharp, frustrated sigh. If he were any younger, he’d stamp his foot—on some level, Rick finds he misses those days. At least a tantrum was easier to say no to than what Carl settles on instead, which is a firm, reasonable, “Dad. You _said_ I could learn.”

And Rick can’t even say, _That was before—_ because before what? He keeps his gaze turned away.

“When’s this lesson supposed to take place?”

“Shane said we could go tomorrow. If it’s okay.”

“Tomorrow. Alright. Make sure someone’s alright with looking after Judith, and the three of us will head out first thing in the morning.”

“Three of us?”

“I’ll keep a lookout,” Rick says. “Not sending the two of you out there alone.”

Carl’s smile falters. “You’re going to spend the whole day arguing with Shane.”

“I’m not going to spend the whole day ar—I don’t argue with Shane.” They haven’t talked enough to argue about anything in days. “Why do you say that? You see us arguing?”

Carl shrugs. “You’re not talking.”

“We talk plenty,” Rick lies. And, when Carl remains unconvinced, he adds, “I’m not going to spend the whole day arguing with Shane. We’ll make a whole day of it. Pack up some sandwiches. Be good to get out of here for a bit. It’ll be fun.”

 

**:::**

 

“This’ll be fun,” Shane says, with an over-the-top enthusiasm that can’t be anything but fake. He lost the driving argument this time, and is pretending to be interested in something out the passenger side window. Rick forces himself to stop fidgeting with the electrical tape on the steering wheel. Carl, sandwiched between them in the front seat of the truck, sits holding the same unloaded shotgun from the day before, staring straight ahead with the blank expression of someone waiting to get off an unbearably slow elevator.

They head west, which takes them through the wildfire-damaged patch of woods Rick had avoided on the road. Dead and blackened trees. The lack of grass and shrubs makes for better visibility.

Rick catches himself peeling back the electrical tape again, makes an effort to smooth it down. “You’re sure you’re up for this?”

“How many times you gonna ask him that, man?” Shane says.

“I was asking _you_. You haven’t taught anyone in a while.”

“Didn’t forget how. Most important thing about any gun’s just knowing it ain’t a toy, and Carl already knows that. No sense repeating it.”

Carl gives Rick a deliberate, sideways look. For a distraction, Rick leans over and switched on the music, keeping the volume low. It’s Johnny Cash, of course: _It’s all over, it’s all over, my heart echoes, it’s all over…_ And when that ends, _Devil’s Right Hand_ is next on the tape, and Rick can’t stand it, switches it off again almost immediately despite the curious looks it earns him. He doesn’t bother with an excuse: the song is playing out in his head anyway, unrelenting, and he feels his shoulders tighten. _Not guilty I said, you got the wrong man, nothing touched the trigger but the devil’s right hand…_

The spot they decide on is far enough away from the prison so as not to worry about drawing too many walkers with the noise, but not so far they won’t be able to make it back on foot if something happens to the truck. They set up a target—long sheet of paper from an admin’s office at the prison—over the trunk of one huge ashy tree.

For his part, Rick tries to remain as unobtrusive as possible, knowing he’s the least welcome person this venture. He takes a post in the bed of the pick-up with a rifle, turning slowly on the spot and trying not to eavesdrop too intently. He can’t help it, catches most of the lesson anyway. Shane’s instructions are direct, to-the-point—but there’s something about his tone that’s different, an easy warmth he didn’t used to reserve only for Carl. The hard edge Rick has gotten so used to is gone, and in spite of his best intentions, he finds himself turning too often to watch them.

Carl lines up a shot at their makeshift target on the tree, taking his time. Shane makes a quick correction to his stance, and then, as if sensing Rick’s gaze upon him, turns and meets it. His smile dims. Carl fires and the shotgun booms, and twenty paces away a section of burnt tree bark splinters apart.

Carl is a natural with a shotgun—all guns, really—and he manages to hit the target, if not the bullseye almost every time. Rick watches with a sense of pride as the paper target disintegrates shot after shot, leaving a dark empty hole in the middle, which the spray of pellets tears apart everything around it. Shane sets up a second target forty yards out—harder to hit with any accuracy, but Carl still manages better than expected.

But as the session wears on, it becomes clear there’s a problem: Carl keeps hurting his shoulder on the recoil. Shane does his best to correct things, nudging him, calling out reminders, but Carl can’t seem to get the hang of it, keeps falling back into the same bad posture and hurting himself all over again. This, as Rick understands, is pretty typical when it comes to shotguns; it’s part of the reason he’s always preferred a handgun when he has an option. He recalls that after trying out a shotgun for the first time on the station’s firing range, Shane had been cheerful enough _(“Never going back, man, you can keep that six-shooter.”_ ) until peeling back the collar of his shirt to reveal a huge, dark bruise spreading across his shoulder. _“Wouldn’t trade it, but that recoil—”_

“This _sucks_ ,” Carl announces, setting the twelve-gauge off to the side and shaking out his arm.

 “It’ll get easier,” Shane says. “Just got some bad habits you gotta break.”

“I was doing fine until you made me start standing weird.”

“You mean fixed your posture?”

“Why’s it matter? I hit the target either way. And when I do it your way I get all beat up.”

“Ain’t the point just to hit the target. You want to be accurate.”

“Isn’t the point of a shotgun that you don’t have to be accurate?”

Rick makes an effort at keeping his face blank as Shane glances towards him, checking his reaction. Not blank enough, apparently; Shane sighs, suddenly seems agitated.

“Don’t give me that, man.”

“What?” Carl says.

“It’s too much work to do it right, so you’re happy doing it wrong? C’mon. You’re better than that. Let’s try this again.”

“I feel like my arm’s about to fall off.”

“You’ll get the hang of it.”

They try again, but Carl only manages to fire off a single round before he stops, with a thin, clamped down noise of pain. Shane starts towards him.

“You alright?”

“Fine.”

“I think he’s done about enough for today,” Rick says. “Let’s haul it in, try some more another time.”

Carl raises his head, as if he’s almost forgotten Rick is there—his expression darkens slightly, as if he’s not happy to remember.

“I’m fine,” he says again.

“You want to let me take a look at your arm first?” Shane asks.

“My arm is _fine_.”

“This is plenty good for a first try,” Rick says, indicating the target. “Better than my first, anyway.”

Shane looks between them, nods. “Your dad’s right. Not too many people could figure this out in a day.”

He puts his hand on the shotgun, to take it, but Carl holds on, his jaw set.

“No. I can do it.”

“Nothing wrong with needing a break—”

“I can go a little longer.”

He raises the gun, takes a few more shots—but when he messes up the last of five, the recoil hits his shoulder and he stops again with a hiss of pain.

“Alright,” Rick says sharply. “That’s enough.”

He climbs down from the bed of the truck. Carl’s already protesting. Shane takes half a step between them, shaking his head.

“He just about got the hang of it,” he says. “Let him say when he’s had enough.”

“He said he’d had enough about ten minutes ago. If you didn’t have him trying so hard to impress you—”

Shane laughs, dismissive, but two high spots of color appear on Carl’s cheeks, and he turns his face away.

“Maybe you missed it, Rick, but this ain’t the kind of skill we can just take our sweet time learning anymore. What, you figure walkers are just gonna stand around waiting ‘til we’re all on our A-game?”

“I said we’re done. That means we’re done. Carl—go get in the truck.”

“Dad—”

“ _Now_ , Carl.”

Carl seems for a moment perched on the brink of further argument—but when he looks at Rick’s face, and takes in his expression, his own falls. He hands off the shotgun to Shane and heads for the truck, muttering as he brushes past Rick, “I knew this was going to happen.”

What he means is _I knew you were going to ruin this_. It’s true, either way. Rick has a sudden vision of himself, of how he must look: cold, unyielding, unfriendly, inviting himself along on this trip and then cutting it short at the first opportunity. And for what? He knows—can barely stand to admit it, but he knows—it isn’t about shotgun practice at all.

He ducks his head and makes up an excuse about gathering up the remains of their makeshift targets, though there’s no point to it. The one at forty yards tears away with some resistance—at twenty yards, there’s barely scraps to collect. _You’re a better shot than I ever was,_ he’ll say, on the drive back to the prison, but he can already feel Carl’s icy silence and knows there’ll be no getting through it today, even if he apologizes outright. He braces himself to face it and turns, only to find Shane has followed him the short distance into the trees.

“I do something to piss you off, lately?”

Rick draws in a deep breath. “When I say something to Carl—”

“I ain’t talking about today.”

Their eyes meet, hold. Rick finds that for once he has to look away first.

“Ain’t getting better, is it?” Shane asks.

“No.” Rick’s throat feels suddenly tight. He says, “We’ll talk about it back at—”

“Three of yous don’t got anything better to do than shooting up the woods out here?”

Rick’s gun is in his hand before he registers what he’s heard. He takes in the details in flashes: Two men standing between the trees. Empty hands already raised. One, thin but far from malnourished—a small revolver at his belt. The other, closer. Flecks of ash in his shockingly red hair. His raised arms tug up the neat canvas workman’s coat he wears, exposing the single small pocket knife clipped at his waist to a belt loop, nothing else.

“I _thought_ that was you,” he says. He’s looking past Rick, grinning. “How the hell you been?”

Rick registers motion in the corner of his eye—the barrel of Shane’s gun falling an inch or two. “Crowley?”

“Small world, huh? How the hell are you?”

Shane lowers his gun altogether, letting out a harsh breath, utters a quiet curse. “You looking to get shot out here?”

“Gotta get my kicks somewhere,” Crowley says. He turns briefly back towards Carl. “Hey, kid. How’s it going?”

Carl doesn’t answer. His gun stays level until Shane gestures for him to lower it, which he does—one grudging inch.

“Sorry to walk up on you all like that,” Crowley says. “Didn’t mean to freak you out. Couldn’t think how else to do it.” When Carl doesn’t react, Crowley’s gaze turns to Rick instead, and stays on him. To Shane, he says, “This the guy you were looking for?”

“Not exactly,” Shane says. To Rick, he adds, somewhat unnecessarily, “Some of the guys I knew, from Woodbury.”

It’s far from reassuring. Still, there doesn’t seem to be an option—everyone in the small clearing is looking at him, waiting. Rick lowers his gun reluctantly, his heart still going fast. “Rick Grimes.”

“Crowley. How you doing.” He steps forward, hand extended; it’s a firm, brief handshake, eye contact and a nod like he’s at a job interview. Gesturing over his shoulder to the other man, he says, “Tim.”

Tim hangs back. He raises a hand in an unenthused little wave Rick makes no effort to return.

“Sorry again for all the surprise,” Crowley says, looking around, and to Rick’s surprise, he does _seem_ sorry. He has an accent—a quick, stretchy-sounding Brooklyn accent, hitting hard on the consonants. “We heard all that shooting before, went to check it out, by the time we were close enough to see what you were about—” He indicates the tree flecked with pellets, and lets out a low whistle. “Target practice, huh? You got good aim, kid. What’s your name?”

Nothing. No answer. Shane says, “It’s alright, Carl.”

“Carl, huh? I like that name.” Crowley seems to be under the impression he’s addressing a toddler, and it does nothing to thaw Carl’s expression. After a moment, awkwardly, “Cute kid. He yours, Walsh?”

Rick steps forward. “I’m his father.”

“Well. Congratulations.”

Rick can’t decide if it sounds sarcastic—can’t decide if there’s anything behind Crowley’s quick almost-smile before he changes the subject, saying, “Hey—Merle around here someplace?”

Shane hesitates only a moment. “Merle got bit. A few months ago.”

Somewhere in the woods, there’s a small dry, snapping noise—the five of them pause, waiting, but it’s nothing, burnt wood settling.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Crowley says, after a moment. His voice is softer; he sounds, again, like he means it. “Real sorry. Jesus. You know, we kind of guessed—I mean, no one back home’s holding their breath waiting for the two of yous to come back, but… Jesus, man.” He passes a hand through his hair and looks towards Rick again. “You travelling together now?”

“Something like that.”

Crowley nods; despite the strangeness of the scene, he seems fully relaxed, circling away from the target again and reaching into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He takes in the truck with a low, mock-impressed whistle. “Holy shit. Someone compensating for something?” He shoots a look over at Rick, an eyebrow raised; getting no reaction, he laughs. “C’mon. Relax a little. I’m just busting your chops.”

His constant, restless movement is starting to make Rick edgy; it’s almost a relief when he goes to the back of the truck, lets down the latch on the bed to make a seat. He has to perform a small hop to get up there and sits with his feet dangling like a kid, no trace of self-consciousness. Rick decides Crowley is the sort of person who used to help himself to the contents of a host’s fridge, without being invited to do so.

“Three of you want to stop waving your guns around like that?” Crowley says, placing a cigarette between his lips, speaking around it. “You can see I’m not armed. Making me nervous as shit. I’m trying to quit these things, for god’s sake. Have some compassion.”

It’s not something Rick has any interest in doing. There doesn’t seem to be any immediate danger, but seeing new people after so long, any new people— He glances towards Shane, who gives a subtle wince, a small nod: a reluctant show of assent. Rick returns the gun to its holster, but leaves the clasp undone, and Shane leans his shotgun against a nearby tree trunk, staying close to it.

Carl doesn’t move. He seems wary and tense as a feral cat. Breathing fast, gaze darting. It’s been too long since he’s seen new people, and seeing him afraid is a sharp, vicious twist to Rick’s nerves.

He puts out a hand. “It’s alright. Come over here,” and Carl hurries to his side.

“Cute kid,” Crowley repeats awkwardly, flicking a lighter and bending his head over the flame. “Anyway. Jesus. You look good, Walsh. Didn’t think we’d be seeing you again. Would’ve put my bets on Merle, between the two of you.” He gestures with the cigarette pack, between them. “Either of you…?”

“Trying to quit,” Shane says, and Rick shakes his head.

“Good for you, buddy. This shit’s getting harder and harder to find.” He returns it to his pocket, gives a small laugh. “God. I can’t get over it. What’re the odds, you figure? See plenty of strangers nowadays, but running into someone you _know_ —That’s got to mean something, doesn’t it?”

Still between the trees, Tim says, “Fate.” His voice makes Rick’s shoulders twitch, reflexively.

“Tim’s a romantic,” Crowley says. “You ever find… Who the hell was it, Merle’s brother?”

Shane’s making a valiant effort to seem relaxed—hands on his belt, head tilted easily to the side, and his voice, when he speaks, is light enough. “Matter of fact, we did.”

“Well, that’s something, huh? Wouldn’t have put much money on that, either. Guess that’s why I never won shit at roulette.”

Tim says, “Nice boots.”

It takes Rick a moment to realize he’s being complimented. Tim’s gaze is on him, flat and expressionless as a gunslinger in an old western.

“Thank you.”

Crowley asks, “You the quiet type, Rick?”

“It’s getting late,” Rick says. “We ought to be going.”

“Going where?” Crowley asks—and, receiving no answer, “You got a party waiting back home? Or this the party out here? Gotta get back home to the wife?”

He noticed the wedding ring, then. More perceptive than he wants to seem. Rick settles a hand on Carl’s shoulder, steps slightly in front of him. “We have a lot of people waiting for us.”

“A lot of people? Geeze. That must be nice, these days. Feels like the world’s gotten so damn small, you get sick of seeing the same people day in, day out…” He doesn’t seem to have noticed the strained note of the conversation, simply plowing on ahead as if they’re long-lost college roommates meeting by chance in a grocery story. He addresses Carl again. “What about you—you got a girlfriend back home?”

“He’s a little young for that,” Rick says.

“You think? How old are you?”

Rick feels Carl standing tense at his back, but his voice is even enough when he answers, “Thirteen.”

“Oh, c’mon, that ain’t too young. All my friends had plenty of girlfriends around that age. Not me, of course. I was a dorky lookin’ fucking kid—Sorry. Seriously. You see this hair? By the time I was thirteen all the kids in my grade were calling me the Little Mermaid. Not many girls want to date the Little Mermaid. Some do. Anyway. Not such a problem since the world ended. Women get a lot less picky when they got less options. Compared to some of the guys back at camp, I ain’t so bad.” He’s turned to Shane again. “Few months ago we took in a new group that was out on the road—about thirty guys? Rough bunch. Not all of ‘em still there—you know how it goes—and I can’t say I’m real broken up over it. But I guess these days you take what you get and the more the merrier, right?”

“Reckon so.”

“What about you, huh? What the hell you been up to out here? God, it’s good to see you, man. Seriously. I can’t get over it.”

“Pretty big coincidence,” Shane says, on a small, unnatural-sounding laugh. “It’s real good seeing you, too, Crowley. But we oughtta be heading out.”

“You going back to Woodbury? We’ll drive with you, if you want. Call it in ahead, so you don’t get shot up as soon as you hit the gate. What can I say—I’m a generous kind of guy.”

“Ain’t going to Woodbury.”

“Where you off to in such a rush, then?” Crowley asks.

Rick catches Shane’s eye, fast. Neither of them plans on answering. Silence between the trees. Rick has a strange sensation—just skirting the edge of déjà vu—gone as soon as he registers it.

Crowley swings his feet, fast and restless, without rhythm. “Guys,” he says after a while, and that grin back again. “C’mon. Lot of _meaningful looks_ being traded around here. Starting to feel like I’m in a silent movie—you know what I’m saying? You camped out around here somewhere?”

“Somewhere,” Shane says.

“Not to many places I’d set up for more than a night around these parts.” He points towards the target, the buckshot-riddled tree. “I figure if you guys are taking the time for target practice, you can’t be running too low on ammo. You got—what, military base or something, around here? Didn’t see one on the map. Without waiting for an answer, he turns suddenly to address Rick. “Seriously, what’s with the mute act? Making me nervous as hell.”

It seems any precaution at all is making Crowley nervous, and Rick is nearing the end of his patience with it. He’s not going to have this conversation, and sees no use discussing it. “If you started running your mouth about _your_ camp to a couple of strangers, I don’t think that’d go over too well, do you?” he says.

Crowley shrugs. “Only guy I don’t know here’s _you_. Rest of us are friends. You don’t want to talk about it, that’s all you need to say. Don’t give me this bullshit about running _my_ mouth.”

“We don’t want to talk about it.”

Aside, to Shane, Crowley says, “Not a step up in the world from Merle, you ask me.”

“Seriously, man, we oughtta get going—”

“You knew Merle, Rick?”

“I did.”

“Good. Then you get what I mean.” Crowley laughs—an easy, unrestrained laugh, like Rick hasn’t heard anyone laugh in years, and the warning prickle running up his spine is back again, stronger than ever. “Ah, shit,” Crowley says, when no one else laughs, “I do this every time. Always fuck up first impressions. Maybe I am running my mouth.” To Shane, he says, “Hell, you know the way I am. Tell him not to be offended, alright?” When Shane doesn’t answer, doesn’t move or say anything, his expression darkens. “Jesus—You gotta get out of here so bad, why don’t you just drive the fuck off? Your truck’s right here. Big fucking rush all of a sudden, acting like that’s my fault.”

He takes a long drag on what’s left of his cigarette, crushes it out on the bed of the truck. He might as well have put it out on a precious family heirloom, or a snoozing pet—Rick hates him for it. He’s aware of his own heartbeat climbing fast in his throat, of Carl standing behind him, of the reflection in the truck mirror, where he can see Tim standing with his shoulders hunched like some scavenger bird, dark eyes darting, waiting… And most of all, Rick is aware of his own gun, the unfamiliar weight of it. He’s never missed the Python more than he does now; he’d spent an embarrassing amount of time in front of the mirror with that gun after marathon watching the Man with No Name movies, practicing his quickdraw, and he knew to the millisecond how long it took to get it from his belt and level it and fire. The glock, by comparison, will be like fumbling with a brick—

Crowley reaches back into his pocket for another cigarette.

“Used to be a hell of a lot more friendly, Walsh,” he says. “Guess it only when you were drinking, huh?”

He draws a gun from his pocket, so casually that by the time Rick realizes it and gets his hand to his gun, Crowley already has his level.

“Hey—” He points the gun towards Rick, then at Shane, who’s moved towards the shotgun against the tree. “Don’t even think about it. Seriously. Walsh—How about you take a couple of steps towards me. Away from all that trouble. And you—” He considers Rick with a quick glance, summing him up and dismissing him in the same moment. “Just keep your hands up, alright?”

He waits. Rick grits his teeth, raises his hands, barely to his shoulders. Crowley seems satisfied with that. Clearly he never worked in law enforcement. Throughout it all, his expression hasn’t changed; still frozen in a smile that bespeaks friendly recognition and a touch of bewilderment, as if he can’t understand the reason for the sudden turn of the conversation.

“C’mon,” he says. “Guys. I don’t think anyone wants to be shooting anyone here. Let’s all just talk this out. Now, you know it’s not going to go over too well if I head on back to Woodbury, say I ran into you and then we just said our goodbyes, no harm done. Hell, I tell ‘em what you just told me about Merle, now all of a sudden _my_ neck’s on the line because I just let the guy who killed Merle go on his merry way.” He holds up a hand, heading off any protest. “Yeah, yeah, he got bit, you can make your case back at Woodbury if you want to go that way. Or we save ourselves a drive, you tell us where you’re camped out so I got something to tell people. You know. Curiosity’s sake. Probably nothing’ll come of it.”

“We’re on the road,” Shane says. “We’re not camped out anywhere.”

“You know, I seen a few people roll in off the road. Usually they don’t look like they had a shower the same morning.”

“Place in town had water on a well system. Only been there a day or two.”

“Buddy, you miss the part where I got a pretty fine-tuned bullshit censor? Looks like we’re going with door number one: you’re coming back to Woodbury with us.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Rick says.

Crowley seems to have almost forgotten he’s there. “ _You_ don’t have to come with us.”

“I understood that. No one here’s going anywhere with you. Either this ends with all of us walking away, or—”

“Or? Get a load of this, Tim, this guy’s about to _threaten_ me—”

A small, quiet _pop_ ping noise rings between the trees. In the reflection of side mirror, Tim collapses. An abrupt, boneless ragdoll collapse. Even as he’s hitting the ground Rick registers another faint sound at his back, another neat _pop!_ An almost simultaneous thud from the truck: the sick, heavy sound of Crowley’s head hitting the truck bed. No tension, no resistance. The revolver slips from his slack hand. Hits the dirt.

For a second Rick’s mind flails wildly. He grabs for his gun in the same moment he wrenches around towards the source of the sound—

Carl still has his gun still braced in both hands to keep the heavy silencer on the barrel levelled. His finger resting on the trigger, gaze darting between the two bodies, as if he expects them to leap back up again, as if transfixed. The clearing is silent except for the quick sound of his breathing.

Rick hears his own voice, flat and stunned, and all he can get out is, “Carl—”

Carl blinks, flinches as if from a horsefly. He lowers the gun.

“I had to,” he says. “Dad—I _had_ to.”

 

:::

 

Shane takes hold of Crowley’s boots to pull him from the back of the truck, and the body makes a heavy slithering sound as if slides to the ash-covered ground. There’s blood everywhere. Huge, shocking pools of it lying in the groves of the truck bed.

“We need to wash this out,” Shane says.

Carl is standing by the front of the truck, hands shoved into his pockets. Rick manages to tear his gaze away from him.

“We will.”

“Just thinking about walkers. The smell.”

“We’ll handle it back at the prison.”

Shane kneels down, draws the gun from Crowley’s hand. Reaches into the pocket of Crowley’s canvas coat and produces a few stray bullets, holds them for a moment in the palm of his hand—then, closing his fingers over them, sits there with his knuckles pressed to his mouth, unmoving.

Rick says to Carl, “Wait in the truck for a minute,” and it’s almost surprising when Carl listens right away. The door falls shut at his back, a loud thump. The the forest around them is silent again. No birds. No walkers. Not even the wind.

“You were friends with these two?” Rick asks.

“Not friends, exactly.”

“Do you need a minute?”

His tone brings Shane’s gaze flashing up to him, sharply, as if he’s suspicious of the offer—of any kindness. After a moment, determining it’s not a trick, he turns back to the body, shaking his head. But he doesn’t move.

“I would’ve done the same as Carl, in another couple of seconds,” he says.

“So would I.”

“Would you?” There’s no venom in it; before Rick can answer, he says, “And I reckon now you’re figuring I lied to you, saying Woodbury was—”

“We’ll talk about it back at the prison,” Rick says. “The smell, all that gunfire—we ought to get out of here before walkers turn up.”

The light between the trees is starting to shift, turning dim and bruised. Something comes next—some crucial, essentially important thing—but frozen there in that small clearing with the smell of blood and gunpowder, neither of them seems to know what it is.

 

**:::**

 

They only speak once on the drive back to the prison.

“So I figure we tell people it was me,” Shane says. He doesn’t sound shaken anymore; instead, his voice is carefully neutral. “I mean, that I shot both of them.”

It punches through some of the haze. Rick sits up straighter. “One was me. And I fired first. Daryl’s already got it figured you’re some kind of—” He stops, shaking his head. Murderer? Trigger-happy psychopath? None of it is right and he can’t think of anything better. “We’ll say it was me.”

Carl looks between them. “What are you guys talking about?”

“You reckon people’ll buy that?”

“Why not?”

“I mean, Jesus, Rick, do I gotta spell it out for you—”

“Why don’t we just tell people the truth?” Carl asks.

Rick doesn’t trust himself to answer, or to look at him. Shane puts a hand on Carl’s shoulder.

“How about you sit this one out, alright, bud?”

“I’m not afraid of—”

“We’ll talk about it back at the prison,” Rick says, for what feels like the twentieth time, the words starting to run together into a mechanical mantra, taking on a tinge of the unreal—an eventual conversation they’ll have in some other place where they may never arrive. To put a quick end to the conversation he says, “Just let me tell the story. The two of you find somewhere to wait, away from it.”

 

**:::**

 

He decides against the lie, in the end, if only because he’s balancing too many already, and because Carl will surely tell the truth if Rick doesn’t. He parts ways with Carl and Shane at the prison and gathers the rest of the group together in one of the guard towers. Before he says anything, their faces are already drawn, nervous. Rick wonders if it’s just meeting like this that’s tipped them off—if something in his manner or expression gives it away, or if it’s something else, a cold layer of _wrongness_ that’s followed him out of that bloodied clearing, clinging to his skin and his clothes like spiderwebs.

He tells it as quickly as he can, getting out the important details. When he gets to talking about Carl, the room is perfectly silent, all held on a collective indrawn breath, and Rick sees their expressions at a glance, looks out the window as he gets out the rest of the story.

No one speaks for a long while when he’d done. After several excruciating seconds, minutes—Glenn says, “These guys—were they religious at all?”

“What?”

“I mean…”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just something we saw, on that supply run a while back,” Glenn says. He casts a quick look at T-Dog. “It wasn’t worth mentioning. Just—weird. I thought if there was another group around here, they might have…”

“What was it?”

“It wasn’t anything. Just a church. But it was—I wouldn’t have even noticed it, but the rest of the town was torn apart. Graffitied. All marked up. Typical stuff.”

“Church was clean though,” T-Dog mutters. He has a hand pressed over his mouth, his gaze fixed absently on an empty spot in the air.

“I mean, _really_ clean. Like someone had scrubbed it, inside and out. The floors were _waxed_. I know people kind of cling to their religion when— But no one can _do_ that kind of stuff anymore. No one has time for it. You don’t take time you could be spending on supplies to clean up a church.” He rolls his shoulders as if trying not to shudder. “We didn’t want to say anything because it was so weird—we just didn’t want to freak people out. And there was nothing else in that town, so we didn’t really think we’d be going back. But if it was these guys from Woodbury—if you ran into them out in the woods, just like that—”

“I don’t think so,” Rick says. His mother, who was Methodist only on holidays or when someone died, would have been appalled by a ten second conversation with Crowley. “They didn’t seem like the type.”

Daryl, from the corner, mutters, “What type they seem like?”

Rick realizes he’s been running his thumb over the curve of the gun at his belt, and forces himself to stop, to keep his hands still. “I don’t think anything will come of it,” he says. “We’ll double up on watch for a while, but we were far enough away from the prison and there was nothing to point anyone back our way. We don’t even know if their group knew where they were headed. Might be days before anyone finds them.”

Might be longer—he has a brief vision of those two corpses lying out in the woods, congealing blood, the night coming on, walkers wandering by, and it gives him an unexpected, guilty twinge; it wasn’t as if they deserved a proper burial, after all, but the idea of leaving _people_ like that, any people…

Beth sits forward in her chair, her hands clasped tight together. She looks worried, and Rick guesses she’s about to ask what they’ll do if there is something out there to lead the Woodbury group back to the prison, is trying to come up with an answer he doesn’t have.

Instead she asks, “How’s Carl?”

And Rick doesn’t know how to answer that, either.

 

**:::**

 

The prison chapel has a door with a lock—along with the guard quarters, it’s the only one in the building that does. Everything painted white except for the dark wood pews, lined along the western wall with arched clerestory windows. Carl stands between the aisles with his face downcast, hat casting his face into shadow, scuffing his toe on the floor; Shane sits on the altar steps, all restless energy, turning a single bullet over in his hand, again and again.

Rick flips the lock closed. Won’t be too good to have this conversation being interrupted.

“You talk about anything yet?” he asks Shane, who shakes his head, throwing a quick glance at Carl. Rick isn’t sure whether or not to be glad of it; this conversation is his to have, but he doesn’t know where to start. He takes a few steps forward, then stops—Carl still hasn’t looked up. Rick has a flash of him as a kid, eyes down at the breakfast table, picking moodily at the crust of a piece of toast because he didn’t want to go to school. Neither of them had ever liked the crust.

When he can, he says, “You’re going to be thinking a lot about what happened today. I wish I had something to tell you that would make that easier, but I don’t. All I have is…” More of the same hollow bullshit. “You did what you felt you had to do. That’s the best any of us can do.”

Carl looks up at last. “I don’t feel bad about it.”

“You might not, yet.”

“I’m not going to,” Carl says. “I’m glad I killed them.” He looks over at Shane, as if hoping for approval of this; Shane is sitting rigidly, still turning that bullet between his fingers, and doesn’t meet his gaze.

There doesn’t seem to be anything to say. Rick takes in the yellowing light through the windows. The whole day has taken on an unreal tinge, like a fever dream or a series of painted scenes, each carefully arranged by some other hand right down to the finest brush stroke. He has to look down at the floor, waiting for the sudden tightness in his throat to ease enough to speak.

“Let’s all go get washed up,” he settles for at last, for lack of anything else to say. “Dinner’s soon. Beth says Judith’s missing you—”

“You don’t need to treat me like a little kid,” Carl says. “I’d do it again, right now.”

“I don’t want to hear you talking like that.”

“It’s true. If we’d waited any longer—”

“We were handling it. You wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

Suddenly Carl is almost shouting, “I’m not worried about me! Don’t you get it?” He’s breathing hard—he whips his head around to look at Shane, back to Rick, as if desperate to find something essentially important in one of their faces. “I should have shot Merle. He was going to kill you. It would have been my fault. If Shane hadn’t been there—I was scared when I needed to be brave. You would have died because I was scared.”

Rick starts toward him. “Everyone’s scared—”

“But I _can’t_ be. Not anymore.” At some point his hand slipped under the collar of his shirt; he’s worrying the _22_ pendant between his fingers, compulsively. “I’m glad I killed them,” he says again. “I don’t regret it. And I’m not going to apologize. I wish I’d killed Merle, too.”

All at once, Rick feels a flash Lori’s disappointment, as distinct as if she’s standing in the room with them. He has to stop himself from looking around. Would she know what to say if she was here? With a painful intensity, he wishes he knew, feels as though he's never wished anything so much in his life.

But no miraculous premonition comes to him from beyond the grave—he stands there meeting Carl's unblinking gaze and feeling helpless to do anything, anything at all, and the helplessness makes him almost panic in a way that staring down two dangerous armed strangers didn't.

“You’re going to want to rethink that,” he says.

“I’m not.”

“You’re not leaving here again until you do.”

“What?”

“We do what we have to do, Carl, but we don’t take pride in it. It’s not about proving ourselves. That was an ugly thing today. Killing a person shouldn’t be easy. And until you figure out this isn’t a game—”

“I know that—”

“It’s pretty obvious you don’t. You don’t need to make these calls. I never should have put you in a place where you’d have to, and that’s on me. It won’t happen again.”

Carl blinks. It’s a moment before he takes in the full meaning of the words. He looks at Shane. “But you said we could—”

“You don’t need any more practice with a shotgun,” Rick says. “You aren’t going to be using one for a good long while.” He indicates the gun at Carl’s belt, the revolver and silencer that always looks too big for him. “Or that.”

But when he steps forward, holding out a hand, Carl takes a corresponding step away, shaking his head.

“No. No, I’m not giving you my gun.”

“You are. You can have it back when you—”

“That’s not fair! Shane, tell him—”

“Don’t look at me, man,” Shane says. The first thing he’s said the whole conversation. “Ain’t my call.”

“You know I’m right!”

Shane hesitates. He’s finally stopped turning the bullet between his hands, and looks up, between the two of them. “Rick, things the way they are nowadays, you sure that’s smart?”

Rick ignores him. He looks steadily at Carl, hand still outstretched. “This is what’s happening. It isn’t up for debate. Now.”

He waits. Carl, for a long moment, doesn’t move—but when he glances at Shane again and gets no further support, his resolve wavers. He holds out another thirty second before he unclips the gun from his belt and shoves it into Rick’s hand.

“Bullets.”

“Dad—”

“Bullets.”

Carl digs them out of his pocket, his jaw clenched, and hands them over. Rick tucks them into his pocket.

“Go and see to your sister. I’ll be along in a minute.”

No hesitation now—Carl goes, hurrying, his head bent again to hide his expression beneath his hat. He throws the door open hard and is halfway down the hallway by the time Rick reaches the doorway to look after him, to be sure he’s heading back towards Cellblock C, and not towards the armoury.

There’s a sigh in the room in his back; a small noise as Shane gets to his feet.

“Listen, man,” he says, “ain’t trying to step on your toes here, but having a weapon these days—”

Rick slams the door shut and rounds on him.

“Don’t tell me how to run my family,” he says. His voice comes out worse than a shout: bristling and even, and Shane freezes mid-step between the pews, caught off guard. “Don’t _ever_ do it again. They’re my children. _Not_ yours. From now on, you disagree with one of my calls, you say it to me in private, and if privacy doesn’t permit itself, you bite your tongue. Are we clear on that?”

A muscle flicks in Shane’s jaw. “So you’re pissed at me about those dumbasses today—”

“Tell me you understand what I just said to you.”

An instant’s sharp-edged silence. Shane doesn’t blink. “Carl needs a gun,” he says. “He did what he figured he had to do. You know in another minute one’ve us would’ve done the same. Maybe instead of taking his damn gun away—”

Rick crosses the distance between them in two strides seizes ahold of the front of Shane’s shirt, hard.

“He’s _not_ your son. You don’t get a say in this.”

Shane throws off his hand. “You think I don’t know that?"

“Seems you need reminding.”

The chapel’s strange acoustics catch the sound of their breathing and echoes it back: loud and harsh and almost animal. They’re teetering on the edge of fistfight, and with a muffled shock Rick realizes he wants that, has wanted it for a while, with a vicious, self-flagellating intensity. No more edging around it, no more counterfeit friendship. The taste of blood in his mouth, the crunch of bone under his fist. A hard flare of anger crosses Shane’s face and Rick thinks, _Finally, finally—_

“What’s the worst thing you ever done, Rick?”

The abruptness of it makes him blink. “What?”

“You ever kill someone? I ain’t talking about on the job,” Shane says. “Bullets flying, it’s easier to… Or getting someone killed. I know you done plenty of that. I mean, pulling the trigger on a person. Doing it yourself. All that there you just said to Carl—how it ain’t easy, we do what we got to do… You had to do it yet?”

Shane waits. When Rick doesn’t answer, he says, “Nah—I didn’t think so.” He lets out a harsh, bitten-off clip of a laugh, looking suddenly, dangerously exhausted. “You were right about one thing, man,” he says. “Next couple of days… weeks… Carl’s going to be doing a lot of thinking about that. And it don’t matter what he says now—he’ll be second guessing himself plenty. Wondering if it was right, what he could’ve done different, replaying it in his head… And you can’t even imagine what that’s like. You got no idea, you know that, Rick? You act like you make all these tough calls, I’m telling you it don’t even come _close_ to what’s—” For a moment he breaks off, looking at the floor. Runs a hand through his hair and leaves it there, tugging at the roots. “You want to do something to help Carl out, don’t lay on the guilt trip. He’ll do enough of that on his own.”

“Did you kill Otis?” Rick asks.

The words seem to bounce from wall to wall like a bullet gone wrong. Rick is expecting confusion, shock, blindsided outrage. He’s not expecting Shane to keep standing there with his head bent, unmoving, unsurprised. They’re still close enough to each other that Rick can watch every shift of his expression—and on a rush of panic, he wants to take it back. Wants to shove the words back down his throat.

Shane drops his hand back to his side. “You figured it out, then,” he says.

_What the hell you talking about? Jesus, Rick, of course I didn’t—_

“Daryl did,” Rick hears himself say, automatically.

Shane lifts one shoulder in a shrug, as if he’s expected this, too. “Yeah. Thought that might’ve been what all that was about.”

 _It was to survive,_ he’s going to say. _It was to save Carl._ Rick knows, just as he’s known the rest of it, has known for a while. There’s only some small, frantic part of him—the part that remembers Shane as a kid, sharing his M&Ms because Rick had dropped his in a mud puddle—that refused to believe it, and needs to hear some reassurance now, a justification, regret—

But Shane doesn’t say it. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even look up. The chapel is silent, dust motes spiralling through the air between them.

Rick steps away from him. All the anger has gone out of him, the panic, too, and there’s just a nasty hollow in the pit of his stomach.

The silence takes on a daunting, unnatural intensity, and it’s a small shock when Shane breaks it, running his hands over his face and letting out out a harsh breath. “So what’s the plan here, Rick?” he asks. “You want to take my gun away, too?”

“I want you to stay away from Carl.” Rick’s voice comes out rough, and he clears his throat. “Don’t talk to him about what happened today. If he says something to you, just—Let me handle it.”

“Don’t want him turning out like me, huh?”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“Ain’t it?”

“He’s my son. Let me handle it.”

He’s expecting anger, some small, nasty comment, but Shane doesn’t answer at all, just keeps his face turned away, the tense line of his shoulders unreadable. The conversation’s over, and it ought to be a relief—the thought of walking out ought to unwind some of the sickened knots in Rick’s stomach, not make them coil tighter. He forces himself to turn away. There’s nothing left worth saying. But at the door he pauses.

“I’m not planning to tell Hershel,” he says. “For now. I don’t think Daryl plans to, either.”

Shane still doesn’t look up from the floor. “You do whatever you’ve gotta do, man. Tell him, don’t tell him—it’s up to you.”

If Hershel hears what happens and decides he doesn’t want Shane around—if Daryl agrees with him—the rest of the group will side with them. Carl won’t like it, of course, and Rick’s not sure about T-Dog, but Glenn will back Maggie and Maggie and Beth will back Hershel. Rick doesn’t know if he would be able to smooth over something like that. Right now, he doesn’t know if he’d even try.

He hesitates another moment with his hand on the door, then goes. The hallway outside is shadowed and chill after the golden light of the chapel. Rick doesn’t slam the door at his back, but halfway down the hall he hears it fall shut, and the echo of the latch sends a fast twitch down the back of his neck. It sounds like a bone breaking—a final, solid, irrevocable snap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd initially planned for chapter three to span November - January, but the word count just kept rising and the slow burn just kept smoldering and time kept ticking. So sorry for the long delay! The next chapter shouldn't take nearly so long.
> 
> * Tim and Crowley are VERY minor characters from Woodbury in season three. They don't have much personality, but what personality they do have I've tweaked and exaggerated here to make them easier to pick out in a conversation.


End file.
